I've found it helpful to bucket AI opportunities into three categories, each with a different impact on revenue and margin.
1. Productivity add-ons
Tools like Microsoft Copilot, Adobe Firefly, and ChatGPT deliver quick wins. Most SaaS platforms now include AI features, and you're already paying for them.
These tools are valuable, and their gains compound over time. But they're table stakes.
Every enterprise should be deploying them to unlock hidden capacity and insight. As CIOs, our job is to ensure the right tools are in place and adopted, so we see real margin expansion, not just impressive demos.
2. Reimagined workflows
This is where meaningful business impact happens.
Your business processes are your capabilities. They define how you create value. With machine learning, we can upgrade those capabilities and strengthen our competitive position.
Today, many customer interactions depend on an employee's individual experience and intuition. But what if every team member could make decisions with the collective intelligence of your best people?
Imagine a new customer service agent. As they answer a call, their system recommends the Next Best Action, drawn from machine learning models trained on your historical data and customer patterns. The agent decides whether to follow the suggestion, and the outcome is captured. Over time, the system keeps learning from every decision and result.
This creates augmented intelligence. Continuously upskilling every employee, improving consistency, and driving measurable revenue uplift through smarter upselling and cross-selling.
As confidence grows, you can safely automate lower-risk scenarios, freeing people to focus where relationships truly matter.
And when you start blending internal and external datasets, the system becomes even more powerful. A self-learning engine that turns every interaction into a competitive advantage.
That's what it means to move from human experience to machine-augmented performance.
3. New business models
At the far end of the spectrum are entirely new models born from AI, like Shopify's dynamic micro-stores or Netflix's content optimization.
They're transformative but rare, and often require a willingness to reinvent or even cannibalize parts of your core business.
Where CIOs should focus
As a CIO, I focus on two or three business areas where reimagining workflows and applying machine learning can materially move the P&L.
That means diving deep into the business model. Understanding how value is created and where we can strengthen our competitive advantage.
Only then can we translate AI potential into real financial outcomes.
That's where AI becomes a growth engine that differentiates the business, not just hype.