Companies are rapidly adopting AI, but boosting return on investment (ROI) requires changing workforce capabilities, job structures and data environments, not stopping at tool deployment, a report said.

On Sept. 29, U.S. tech media outlet TechRadar said Adam Field (애덤 필드), chief AI officer at Tungsten Automation, stressed in a contributed article that, "AI investment results depend on the people who will use it and work structures rather than the technology itself." A McKinsey survey found 88 percent of organisations worldwide use AI in at least one business function, but relatively few companies translate that into actual profits.

A shortage of workforce capability is also an obstacle. BusinessLDN surveyed more than 2,000 London business leaders and found only half said current employees have the capabilities their organisations require. In the AI era, the report said, what matters is not only basic IT skills but also digital literacy, the ability to critically evaluate AI outputs and the ability to integrate AI into existing workflows.

Field argued that companies also need to redesign job postings and job descriptions. He said they should specify the AI tools actually used and the judgement and analytical skills required, securing workers who link their work to productivity gains rather than simply operating tools. He also saw it as important to create an environment where employees can test various prompts and ways of using them.

The data environment is also a problem. Much corporate information is bound up in unstructured data such as email, PDFs and documents, making it hard for AI to understand organisation-wide context. Unless companies structure so-called dark data, the report said, even adopting a good AI model could lead it to produce answers based on incomplete information, preventing pilot projects from expanding into full operations.

Field said AI can reduce repetitive work and documentation, but humans still play an important role in judgement, creativity, storytelling and change management. To increase AI ROI, companies should simultaneously push job redesign, retraining and data organisation along with technology investment, the report said.