Only 3% of Boardroom Executives See AI Productivity Gains

What happened

Only 3% of boardroom executives report seeing productivity and cost savings from artificial intelligence, according to figures published by The Register. Many organisations are also spending more on AI than they expected, and a substantial group forecasts further increases in 2027.

The reporting frames the finding as a gap between investment and realised value. Because the headline figure concerns board-level leaders, the group that typically approves budgets and sponsors transformation programmes, the result carries particular weight for customer experience and digital leaders who depend on those decisions.

Why it matters

The gap points to an operating-model question rather than a purchasing one. AI tools are now widely accessible, so cost of access is rarely the main constraint. The harder work is redesigning workflows, roles and service journeys so that the technology changes outcomes for customers and staff. When gains are hard to see, spending tends to continue on momentum, which makes measurement design as important as the tools themselves.

For experience leaders, the signal is that benefits are most likely to appear where organisations defined what good looks like before deployment, such as response times, resolution rates, customer effort and time returned to employees. Without those baselines, productivity claims are difficult to test, and the case for further investment becomes harder to defend in the following budget cycle.

By the numbers

• 3% of boardroom executives report seeing productivity and cost savings from AI.
• 2027 is the year by which many organisations forecast further increases in AI spending.

The Renascence take

Most readers will treat this as a verdict on AI itself. It is better read as a verdict on how AI has been adopted. Overspending without visible returns is a familiar pattern: once a programme is funded, sunk-cost thinking pushes leaders to keep investing in order to justify the original decision.

The fix is to set the success measure before the pilot starts, not after the invoice arrives. Pick one customer journey, instrument it end to end, and agree the review window in advance. Any AI initiative that cannot show movement in that window should be stopped or redesigned, however fashionable the tool.