Scaling Generative AI — Unlocking Enterprise Value and Maximising ROI

Despite the rapid advancements in AI, enterprises are still struggling to realise its full value. If AI can boost personal productivity by 50% or more, why aren’t enterprises seeing the same transformational impact? 

The challenge lies in scaling AI effectively, integrating it seamlessly into existing workflows, and ensuring security and governance without slowing innovation. CIOs and CISOs are the ones who must bridge this gap for their organisations. 

Recently, CIOs and CISOs in our Middle East Communities gathered for a Town Hall discussion on scaling GenAI across the enterprise. Rami Bou Hamdan, Vice President, Sales - MEA at UnifyApps moderated the discussion. Governing Body Members Abdullah Al-Barwani, General Manager, Cybersecurity at Omantel; Manoj Bhojwani, Group CIO at Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank; Waqas Butt, Group Head of ICT & AI at Alpha Dhabi Holding; and Damian O'Gara, CDIO at Kent served as panelists.

Executives on the panel discussed how to scale GenAI by ensuring seamless integration, standardisations and performance, how to integrate AI and workforce transformation, driving adoption across all functions, and how to communicate the ROI of AI to make the case for enterprise-wide adoption.  

Here are three takeaways from their discussion:

• AI Integration and the Impact of Agentic AI: The discussion highlighted the growing role of Agentic AI in transforming organizational processes, such as onboarding and IT services automation. By 2025, it is expected that AI will automate 30% of IT services, up from the current 10%. This shift raises questions about the future of jobs as digital work increasingly outperforms human interaction.

Organizations are encouraged to reimagine their structures with AI at the forefront and to consider AI as an integral part of their tech stack, similar to the revolutionary impact of the Internet.

• AI Governance and Cybersecurity: Establishing a Center of Excellence for AI is crucial to govern AI programs effectively, particularly for Agentic AI. This center covers areas like risk management, technology development, and cybersecurity. In the area of cybersecurity, executives shared that AI is enhancing security capabilities by improving detection and response times and creating a digital trust layer based on AI insights. 

They also discussed that organizations must ensure data quality and compliance with AI systems, emphasizing the need for structured and AI-ready data before scaling AI initiatives. As one IT leader noted, “We must focus on data quality and guardrails first before we start to scale.” Another executive encouraged the group to ensure that organisational data is in compliance with their internal AI agent. One IT executive also pointed out that “ensuring your high-quality data is well structured will improve the ROI for AI initiatives.”

• Vendor Partnerships and Demonstrating Business Value: The discussion emphasized the importance of partnering closely with vendors to achieve AI objectives, focusing on business value and flexibility in contracts. Organizations are advised to adopt a top-down approach to execute AI value effectively. One executive also recommended “refining your purpose with AI before integrating it into business cases.” 

The need for a comprehensive AI strategy, including platform choice, governance, and skills development, was also highlighted to drive AI enablement across the organization. CIOs and CISOs must also provide clear examples of how use cases link to business KPIs. The panellists discussed which metrics to use to quantify the success of AI initiatives.

Executives agreed that AI is foundational to modern IT and that there is an immense opportunity to transform organizational processes by implementing it effectively. One executive in the discussion shared that “AI must be your end-to-end solution rather than a patchwork solution.” 

To join the conversation on scaling and improving processes with AI, community members can sign in to the app to register for upcoming events. If you are new to Gartner C-level Communities, apply to join your regional CIO or CISO community to connect with IT and security peers on critical priorities.
 

Special thanks to UnifyApps.