How the spend gets approved, against what horizon, and by whom.
12documents on this topic
10organizations represented
2issues named
6sourced citations
2sourced statistics
The state of it
One of 7 topics within ROI measurement.
12 documents from 10 organizations deal with how the spend gets approved. The recurring finding is not that executives are unwilling to invest - they demonstrably are - but that they cannot say what they expect back with enough precision to be held to it.
KPMG states it plainly: executives remain willing to invest to gain productivity and competitive edge, but struggle to quantify expected returns and set realistic targets. That combination - high willingness, low precision - is what produces both the large approved budgets and the high cancellation rate, and it is the reason the investment discipline material has moved toward staged funding.
The issues, by agreement
How many independent organizations name each issue as a problem. An issue is only as real as the number of separate publishers that identify it, so the count is the ranking. Bars are organizations, not documents. Where the count reads ours, no publisher here states the issue and the analysis is our own.
Each issue carries the organizations that name it, the numbers behind it, and the remedies proposed - with the concrete steps under each. Every citation points at a section of a named document, so any count here can be checked.
Issue 012 organizations name it2026 evidence
Willingness to invest is high and precision about the return is low
Budgets are approved on conviction rather than on a quantified expectation, which means there is no threshold at which the investment is judged to have failed.
Every approval names the return below which the investment would be judged a failure, and the date that judgement gets made.
Done when Every AI investment paper states the return below which it would be judged a failure and the date that judgement is made, held where it cannot be quietly revised, with the portfolio hit rate published annually.
Require a stated minimum acceptable return and a review date in every AI investment paper.0-30 daysCFO
Record it where it cannot be quietly revised, and report against it.30-90 daysCFO
Publish the hit rate across the portfolio annually.ongoingCFO
Fund in stages against evidence
Release funding in tranches tied to measured milestones rather than approving the full programme against a projection.
Done when Approvals are split into discovery, production pilot and scale with an evidence gate on each, and the second tranche has been released only against a measured result compared with the frozen baseline.
Split approvals into discovery, production pilot and scale, each with its own evidence gate.0-30 daysCFO
Make the second tranche conditional on a measured result against the frozen baseline.30-90 daysCFO
The evidence — 4 documents
Organization
Document
Position
Boston Consulting GroupConsultancy · July 2026
Driving cost advantage with AIOur reading Reports 82% of CEOs more optimistic about AI ROI than a year earlier alongside 60% reporting no material gains, which is the gap between conviction and measurement.Executive summary
names it
KPMGConsultancy · March 2025
Value at StakeOur reading Reports executives remaining willing to invest in generative AI for productivity and competitive edge while struggling to quantify expected returns and set realistic targets.Executive willingness and target setting
Building the AI business caseOur reading Sets out a business case structure spanning hardware, software and people costs against quantified benefit.Building the AI business case
proposes a fix
Issue 021 organization name it2026 evidence
Spreading investment across many use cases halves the return
Portfolios of hundreds of small use cases underperform concentrated investment in a few, but the catalogue approach remains the default because it is easier to approve.
2.7xReturn on invested capital of applied-AI leaders relative to peersBoston Consulting Group · Jul 2026
How to fix it — 1 approach, 3 steps
Fund three things properly instead of thirty thinly
Concentration is the finding. Rank by value at stake and fund the top of the list to completion before starting the rest.
Done when The portfolio is ranked by measured value at stake rather than ease of delivery, everything below the top few is stopped or parked with its funding redeployed, and the weighting favours core operations over support functions.
Rank the current portfolio by measured value at stake, not by ease of delivery.0-30 daysCFO
Stop or park everything below the top few and redeploy the funding.30-90 daysCEO
Weight toward core operations rather than support functions.90-180 daysCOO
The evidence — 2 documents
Organization
Document
Position
Boston Consulting GroupConsultancy · December 2024
AI value creation in leading enterprisesOur reading Reports leaders investing in few high-priority opportunities with roughly double the ROI impact instead of hundreds of use cases, backed by around twice the investment in AI capability and twice the people.What leaders do differently
names it
Boston Consulting GroupConsultancy · July 2026
Driving cost advantage with AIOur reading Identifies depth of commitment - deliberate deployment into core operations at scale - as what separates companies generating value from those that are not.Depth of commitment
names it
Who is represented
This dossier is drawn from 10 organizations working on the subject, 3 of which are cited directly in the issues above.
Consultancy — 8
KPMG 3Boston Consulting Group 2EY 1Capgemini 1Deloitte 1Genpact 1Infosys 1McKinsey & Company 1