Turning AI into ROI: what successful organisations do differently

Organisations should see AI as an opportunity to fundamentally rethink their business models rather than to just improve efficiency. AI ROI Leaders are significantly more likely to define their most critical AI wins in strategic terms: “creation of revenue growth opportunities” (50 per cent) and “business model reimagination” (43 per cent).

Organisations should treat AI as a core organisational transformation and fund accordingly. Ninety-five per cent of AI ROI Leaders allocate more than 10% of their technology budget to AI. Moreover, they are more likely than other respondents to have significantly increased their AI spending in the past 12 months and are more likely to plan to do so again in the next 12 months.

To address workforce resistance, organisation should position AI as a tool that augments. Some 84 per cent of AI ROI leaders believe agentic AI will enable employees to spend more time on strategic and creative tasks. Successful implementation depends on deep organisational change management, including individual attitudes towards change and a culture that supports acceptance and collaboration.

62 per cent of AI ROI leaders said AI is explicitly part of corporate strategy. Governance models are also evolving with ten per cent of respondents reporting that the CEO is the primary owner of the AI agenda. This signals importance to the business and helps sustain investment through periods of uncertainty about ROI.

Leading organisations understand that a more nuanced approach to ROI, with a wider set of KPIs, is crucial for value realisation: 86 per cent of AI ROI Leaders explicitly use different frameworks or timeframes for generative versus agentic AI. AI leaders do not apply a uniform, one-size-fits-all approach, when it comes to measuring ROI from AI initiatives.

AI ROI Leaders are more likely to view AI fluency as a non-negotiable core competency. Among AI ROI Leaders, 40 per cent mandate AI training. Leading organisations are moving beyond voluntary education to embed AI understanding as a fundamental skill across their workforce.

From 15 August to 5 September 2025, Deloitte surveyed 1,854 senior executives in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Poland, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

All organisations have one or more working implementations of AI in daily use. Additionally, they have pilots in place to explore generative AI, or have one or more working implementations of generative AI in daily use.

Respondents meet one of the following criteria with respect to their organisation’s AI and data science strategy, investments, implementation approach and value measurement: they influence decision-making, are part of a team that makes decisions, are the final decision-maker, or manage or oversee AI technology implementations.

Twenty-four interviews were conducted with executives in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, with six interviews in each country. Deloitte's internal generative AI platform was used to significantly accelerate the analysis of interview transcripts, reducing processing time from weeks to hours while maintaining a rigorous and methodological human-led approach. 

The authors would like to thank all participating executives for their support in completing the survey as well of those that gave their time to be interviewed as part of this research. Additionally, the authors would like to thank Bjoern Bringmann, Ram Sahu, Gouri Sohani, Sulabh Soral, David Thogmartin and Anush Viswanathan for their contributions to this article.

[1] “Evaluating the ROI of Major Tech Investments", AWS Executive Insights, October 2024.