Global survey: How leaders are generating value from generative AI

The generative AI conversation is still going strong, but is all the buzz translating into organizations’ bottom line?

According to a new National Research Group study, “The ROI of Gen AI,” commissioned by Google Cloud, the technology is already delivering measurable results.

We asked more than 2,500 executive-level business leaders how they and their organizations are using gen AI and how quickly they’re seeing benefits. The numbers speak for themselves:

• 74% of enterprises using gen AI are currently seeing return on investment (ROI), with an additional 30-35% anticipating ROI within the next 12 months.
• 45% of the organizations who report productivity gains estimate employee productivity has at least doubled from gen AI.
• 85% of those who report an improved user experience also report measurable gains in user engagement and user satisfaction.
• 56% of organizations say gen AI has improved security posture, enhancing their ability to identify threats and reducing time to resolution.
  

Against this backdrop of emerging success, the survey also reveals that some companies are surging ahead of the pack, generating financial gains from their gen AI initiatives. We can look at these top performers, dubbed “Gen AI Leaders,” to shed light on some of the core elements helping them realize greater returns. And herein lies the critical insight: For industry leaders looking to justify gen AI’s long-term investment, you’ll have to prove its value first.

Over the past year, we’ve seen a growing need for actionable strategies to show the ROI of gen AI in real-world applications. From conversations with our customers and partners, we know that many organizations understand what generative capabilities can do, but they are less clear about the exact business benefits.

As more businesses move beyond gen AI experimentation, it will be more critical than ever to understand how to quantify the impact of gen AI to pave the way for future possibilities. With that in mind, let’s examine three strategic priorities helping these leaders capitalize on gen AI and lay the foundation to unlock its full potential.

1. Aligning gen AI with your core business

Gen AI is not merely an experimental technology tool, it’s a powerful differentiator that can help you achieve your business objectives. As more leaders are recognizing this, they are rallying cross-functional executive support and centering gen AI initiatives around their core business.

Rather than launching on isolated efforts in specific departments, we see 69% of Gen AI Leaders already using gen AI for at least half of their core business functions. Focusing on how technology implementations can contribute to more successful outcomes can also help position organizations to take full advantage of the possibilities of gen AI — and critically, accelerate implementing new use cases. Already, more than half of Gen AI Leaders say they have 10 or more use cases in production.

Operational transformations like these, which require resources, strategic alignment, and cultural transformations, wouldn’t be possible without support from across the organization — and many companies are struggling to find it. The survey found that just one in four organizations have C-level sponsorship for their AI initiatives.

By comparison, the top 27% that have gained shared support across the C-suite are sprinting ahead and bringing ideas to market in three months or less, compared to the average of three to six months.

Overall, these insights indicate that establishing a comprehensive AI strategy, driven by leaders from multiple areas of the business — not just within IT — is a fundamental cornerstone for success, helping to define a clear vision that can inform both strategic goals and key use cases. To do this, you’ll need to focus on securing buy-in from multiple members of the C-suite to drive gen AI initiatives together, ensuring more accountability, faster decision-making, and accelerated business impact.

2. Focusing on growth-oriented goals

Another area where Gen AI Leaders differentiate themselves is they pursue growth-oriented business goals, such as improving customer experience and new product development over iterating on the existing business. Honing in on these areas can be a powerful catalyst for change, which naturally serves to improve operational efficiency, employee productivity, and accelerated innovation.

For example, customer service is the most popular functional area for gen AI investment across the board, no matter what industry. Many customer service centers currently leverage rules-based chat or voice bots to help human agents field calls, which are not only difficult to navigate but also highly inaccurate.

Using gen AI agents to deliver faster, highly accurate experiences not only drives growth through increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, but also delivers significant productivity gains and cost savings. We have seen customers like M&S benefit from the integration of AI into their workflows.

Still, implementing gen AI is not a one-size-fits-all model. For some companies, focusing on high growth might be the best path forward if they already have the right foundation, expertise, and mindset to achieve this. However, others may need to lead with quick wins first to gain the funding and cross-functional backing needed to support future projects.

At Google Cloud, we use a simple matrix with our customers to help map revenue increase to the time it takes to realize value — based on past experience moving use cases into production. In order to help us jointly prioritize, we plot their use cases by expected revenue generation and expected time to value.

There are many different possibilities, ranging from low-hanging fruit to larger-scale transformation. Evaluating use cases using this framework enables organizations to understand the different tradeoffs between use cases and assess whether they can support implementing high value use cases or whether they’re requirements are better suited to starting with quick wins with more moderate gains.

To maximize ROI, we’ve found that the most effective strategy is to look for what we call “Best Bets,” higher-impact use cases that can deliver measurable value quickly.

3. Keeping data at the heart of future investments

Early gains from gen AI can be reinvested to drive a cycle of continuous growth and innovation, leading to even greater returns. In fact, 86% of Gen AI Leaders are betting big on gen AI, with plans to allocate at least half of their future AI budget to gen AI. In addition to aligning business and IT, and upskilling and hiring talent, organizations view enhancing data quality and knowledge management as a top investment priority to maximize the impact of gen AI.

Ultimately, your data remains the most powerful asset at your disposal and the key to driving high-impact use cases unique to your business, whether you’re a startup or a large established enterprise. The majority of enterprises today have a massive amount of untapped value in their unstructured and structured data that is locked away in disparate systems.

The advent of gen AI has made it easier than ever to process, interpret and synthesize — structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data — helping organizations to take smarter actions and drive competitive advantage. Top organizations like Globo, Kakao Brain, MSCI, McLaren Racing and many others are already building and deploying AI data agents to ask and answer questions about internal and external data sources, synthesize research, and develop new models.

Hint: The winners of tomorrow will be companies that make deploying and customizing gen AI models — and grounding them in trusted enterprise data sources — a core competency.

Looking forward

The momentum behind generative AI is undeniable, but the real test lies in turning buzz into tangible business value. As the survey data reveals, companies that embrace a holistic approach to gen AI adoption — securing C-suite alignment, prioritizing strategic use cases, and investing in data — are the ones reaping substantial returns.

It's clear that gen AI is not just a technological novelty, but a strategic imperative for businesses seeking to thrive in the digital age. So, whether you're experimenting with pilots or scaling production use cases, the key takeaway is clear: those who take decisive action today will be the leaders of tomorrow.

Download our report, “The ROI of Gen AI” to get the latest insights on how gen AI is bringing value to enterprises.