How To Calculate ROI For AI Investments
💡
Key Takeaway
AI access alone no longer separates winners from laggards – the gap is in how companies measure, scope, and roll out what they build. Deloitte's research puts the average payback period at two to four years, well beyond the 7-to-12-month return window most technology investments clear, and the companies closing that gap fastest are the ones who isolate a specific workflow, set a hard baseline before launch, and run controlled tests that prove the AI outperformed the manual alternative. If you're defending an AI budget right now, stop measuring broad adoption and start measuring discrete outcomes – conversion lift on a single search experience, ticket deflection on a single support workflow – because that is the level of proof that holds up in a board review.
AI access alone no longer separates winners from laggards – the gap is in how companies measure, scope, and roll out what they build. Deloitte's research puts the average payback period at two to four years, well beyond the 7-to-12-month return window most technology investments clear, and the companies closing that gap fastest are the ones who isolate a specific workflow, set a hard baseline before launch, and run controlled tests that prove the AI outperformed the manual alternative. If you're defending an AI budget right now, stop measuring broad adoption and start measuring discrete outcomes – conversion lift on a single search experience, ticket deflection on a single support workflow – because that is the level of proof that holds up in a board review.
Originally reported by Shopify. Read the full story here.
