Production-Grade AI: From AI Activity to EBIT

This article is based on Chapter 1: Reality Check from Production Grade AI

If you’re feeling bruised by endless AI pilots, endless “activity” and zero change to the balance sheet, you’re not alone. But there’s a path to break the cycle.

Where’s the Line Item for All This AI?

Let’s be honest: AI is everywhere, but the P&L barely flinches. We’ve seen wild adoption stats, new tools appearing weekly, and every function getting “smarter.” Yet your CFO still hasn’t seen a true EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Tax) boost.

It’s not a technology deficit. It’s a business impact one. Most “horizontal” tools (think: chat, notes, code helpers) feel handy but rarely transform core workflows, and that’s where value lives.

The Pattern Behind Fluffy Results

Why do so many efforts stall?

• Integration gap: If your AI lives in a sidecar, not the system of record (SoR), it’s not moving the P&L. Value lands only when the machine joins the flow and old manual steps are retired.
• Pilot purgatory: Demos don’t scale. Pilots that never get a named owner, or never pass a stage gate, just dilute energy. Impact requires production delivery with unequivocal ownership.
• People and risk: Trust, incentives, and clear accountability matter—especially in regulated businesses. AI must be built with humans in the loop and a controlled path to real business outcomes.

So, What Works? One Vertical, Shipped

Leaders buck the trend by focusing. Take one vertical workflow, tie it to a painful metric—claims handling time, order fulfilment lag, customer query cost. Ship an AI-enabled process inside the SoR, agree what steps it will retire, and make results visible. That’s when the numbers change.

A standout example: Klarna’s AI assistant. In its first month, it took over two-thirds of chat queries, dropped repeat contacts by 25%, and cut resolution times dramatically. The difference? Full integration, explicit deprecation of the old way, measurable KPIs.

Your 12‑Week Roadmap

Here’s how a CIO can deliver visible impact—not just AI buzzwords—in one quarter:

1. Weeks 0–2: Baseline and Ownership

• Pick a business process with real pain—say, claims triage.
• Measure your median and P95 handle times. Assign a single, named owner.
• Make the stakes public: baseline charts, an accountable leader, a clear KPI and target.

2. Weeks 3–6: Ship Inside the System

• Deploy your Gen AI solution within the SoR—not as a parallel tool.
• Set a “deprecation gate.” What will the new system replace?
• Instrument everything: log costs, failures, latency, and guardrails directly into your system.

3. Weeks 7–10: Expand & Harden

• Add recommended “next best actions.”
• Launch a canary release and start reviewing retention on the new route.
• Track incidents and fixes. Share your canary metrics.

4. Weeks 11–12: Retire the Old Path

• When guardrails are passed, shut down the manual route.
• Report on KPI improvement, cost-per-successful-case, and what’s been sunset.

Don’t Fall for the Discovery Trap

It’s tempting to run broad “discovery” and insist on lots of workshops. But only production delivery, integrated and measured, moves your EBIT. Avoid the slide-ware. Insist that every AI dollar spent shows up on your executive dashboard, with sunk costs retired and hard KPIs in place.

Takeaways

• Integrate or it’s a demo. Only SoR-integration, with old steps retired, changes economics.
• One KPI / one owner / one date. Clarity steers delivery.
• Celebrate deprecation, not pilots. Value is visible when the old method truly goes away.

AI delivers business value at the speed of ordinary project management—plan, integrate, measure, and close the loop. That’s the CIO’s route from AI commotion to real EBIT impact—in just 12 weeks.