Why CIOs now see potential over cost when it comes to generative AI

Traditionally, operating cost has been a top success metric for CIOs. However, perspectives on cost have shifted dramatically when it comes to the subject of generative AI. CIOs and IT leadership, now elevated from supporters of business operations to strategic drivers of workplace transformation, see the rapid evolution of generative AI as an opportunity to drive transformative workplace innovation and productivity. With generative AI set to potentially increase global GDP by nearly 7% (almost $7 trillion) over a 10-year period and boost worker productivity by around 40%, it’s become essential to the long-term strategies of every business across all industries. 

To get a closer look at how generative AI is shaping strategies for CIOs and IT leaders, why priorities have shifted, and how perspectives on cost and technologies are changing, we worked with ISG to conduct a survey of CIOs and IT leaders (VP level and above) across companies in the Americas and Europe with 1000+ employees. The research discovered that in 2024 and beyond, CIOs are ready to go all-in on experimenting with and investing in generative AI in the pursuit of transformative productivity.

Productivity worth spending for

As CIOs lead the charge in exploring and integrating generative AI into the enterprise, they see information synthesis and discoverability as the most impactful business applications for generative AI – not new content or code generation. The survey found that CIO’s consider these capabilities as the most important to pursue when it comes to productivity improvement:

Customer chat (43%)

When it comes to customer support and interaction, live chat has become an expectation rather than a luxury. A real-time communication tool can drastically reduce issue resolution times, improve customer satisfaction, as well as boost customer loyalty and retention. However, staffing a 24/7 live-chat system can be difficult, expensive, and imperfect – making generative AI a perfect tool to fill in the cracks. While human interactions are still important, AI-powered customer chat tools, grounded in enterprise-specific knowledge, can provide accurate and relevant responses to customer queries the minute they ask them. Proactive chat tools can also help initiate conversations when needed, predicting and handling the simpler issues before they’re escalated to support representatives.

Proactive enterprise search (41%)

Within each enterprise lies a veritable gold mine of value – hidden information locked away and untapped due to the sheer volume of data businesses work with today. Generative AI presents an opportunity to bring order to the chaos of modern digital work by processing the complex information buried deep within each organization's corpus without workers having to manually collate and structure data for it to process. Harnessing the many documents, lines of code, images, and conversations lying dormant and underused is key to helping workers be more productive and make better-informed decisions.

Written content interpretation (41%)  

With so much information being generated every day at work, having a solution that analyzes, interprets, and presents information succinctly to workers could save enterprises an immense amount of time. Generative AI solutions with access to enterprise-specific knowledge and good permissioning guidelines are perfectly poised to provide this capability to workers.

Start progress with generative AI today

With such promising capabilities on the horizon for generative AI, set to boost productivity and efficiency of workers across the board, cost concerns are 9th, 12th and 13th out of the top 13 concerns about generative AI implementation for CIOs and IT leadership. CIOs are ready to invest in this technology, and many are looking to get started now rather than later to avoid falling behind the competition. For more insights on how the advent of generative AI is causing CIOs and IT leadership to adapt, get the full eBook here. 

Looking to get started with an enterprise-ready generative AI solution today? Glean enables some of the world’s leading companies to uplevel their workflows with market-leading enterprise search and AI without compromising on security and governance. Get a demo today to learn more.