“The shoemaker’s kid goes barefoot.”
This old saying perfectly captures a trend I’m seeing with AI adoption. We’re all focused on building impressive, outward-facing AI tools for our customers. They’re “cool,” and they get all the attention.
But what about our own organizations and our internal processes?
Most AI Efforts Stall
MIT research shows that only about 5% of companies are seeing success with AI.1 At the same time, 64% of CEOs admit the risk of falling behind pushes them to invest in technology before they fully understand the value.2 The pressure is real, but it’s also part of the problem.
Hype vs. Value
At a CEO forum I recently attended, the conversation on AI centered almost entirely on projecting innovation, with little focus on sustainable value.
What struck me most was this: leaders are clearly banking on AI to deliver the next big productivity boost, but many are out of their own depth in understanding what AI can truly achieve at scale. That gap between ambition and comprehension is why so many initiatives stall.
Defining ROI in AI
Too often, AI’s return on investment is framed narrowly as new revenue generation — customer-facing copilots, personalization engines, digital agents. These can move the top line, but ROI isn’t just about chasing growth.
From a financial perspective, ROI is ultimately measured by how technology improves margins — either by expanding revenue opportunities or by structurally reducing the cost of operation.
- Revenue Impact: AI can drive conversions, unlock new digital products, and create differentiated customer experiences that generate more revenue.
- Cost Efficiency: AI can compress expense structures by automating back-office workflows, improving forecasting accuracy, streamlining compliance, and reducing IT overhead.
The most significant near-term opportunity often lies on the cost side. These operational improvements don’t just save dollars — they create durable margin gains that compound over time, freeing up capital to reinvest in growth.
Where AI Quietly Delivers Substantial Returns
The true value of AI isn’t in one flashy tool, but in how it quietly re-engineers the workflows that define how organizations operate:
- Finance & Forecasting – AI is closing books faster, reconciling accounts automatically, and predicting cash flow with unprecedented accuracy. This means leaders can make sharper decisions earlier.
- Compliance & Risk – Instead of armies of people reviewing transactions line by line, AI can flag anomalies, accelerate audits, and reduce regulatory overhead. The cost savings are matched by reduced exposure to risk.
- IT & Operations – AI-powered monitoring and self-healing systems cut downtime and support costs, while intelligent workflows keep infrastructure running smoothly in the background.
- Knowledge Management – With most enterprise data trapped in unstructured formats, AI transforms it into actionable insights, helping employees find and apply information in seconds instead of hours.
Each of these, on its own, is valuable. Together, they create compounding returns: fewer delays, lower costs, faster insight, and ultimately, better business performance.
Practicing What We Preach
At OpsGuru, we’ve had our own “shoemaker’s kid” moments. We spend our days helping clients modernize and take advantage of AI, but we’ve had to stop and ask ourselves if we’re applying the same discipline internally.
That’s changing. We’ve started embedding AI into our proposals, forecasting, and knowledge systems. Not as glamorous as a chatbot on a homepage — but it saves real time, improves consistency, and frees up our people to focus where they add the most value.
The companies that thrive won’t just be the ones with the coolest demos. They’ll also be the ones who apply AI judiciously, strengthen their foundations, and make sure their own kids aren’t going barefoot.