Not all AI projects deliver equal value. Learn how to identify, evaluate, and prioritize use cases that drive measurable business impact and competitive advantage.
Organizations waste millions on AI projects that fail to deliver value. These common mistakes drain budgets, demoralize teams, and create skepticism about AI's potential.
Companies implement impressive AI technology without clear business problems, resulting in solutions searching for problems and minimal adoption.
Organizations tackle complex, high-risk AI problems first, leading to delays, budget overruns, and failure to demonstrate value.
Teams commit to AI use cases without verifying data availability and quality, discovering fundamental gaps only after significant investment.
AI solutions are developed without considering change management, stakeholder buy-in, or workflow integration requirements.
Our proven framework evaluates potential AI use cases across six critical dimensions to identify projects with the highest probability of success and business impact.
Quantify the potential business impact across revenue growth, cost reduction, customer experience, and risk mitigation.
Assess availability, quality, and accessibility of data required to build and maintain the AI solution.
Evaluate whether current AI technology can effectively solve this problem and whether you have the capabilities to implement it.
Consider the effort required to deploy and integrate the AI solution into existing processes and systems.
Estimate how quickly you can demonstrate tangible results and build momentum for broader AI adoption.
Assess ethical, regulatory, operational, and reputational risks associated with the AI use case.
Get our comprehensive spreadsheet template with scoring criteria, evaluation worksheets, and prioritization matrix. Used by leading organizations to select winning AI projects.
After scoring use cases, plot them on this matrix to identify quick wins, strategic bets, and projects to avoid.
High Value + Low Effort
Prioritize these first. They build momentum, demonstrate ROI, and create organizational confidence in AI.
High Value + High Effort
Pursue after quick wins. Require significant investment but deliver transformative impact.
Low Value + Low Effort
Consider when resources are available. Easy to implement but limited business impact.
Low Value + High Effort
Avoid these. High investment with minimal return. Re-evaluate or eliminate from consideration.
Don't put all resources into one category. A balanced AI portfolio includes:
Start with 1-2 use cases if you're new to AI, focusing on quick wins. As capabilities mature, you can handle 3-5 concurrent projects. Attempting too many projects simultaneously dilutes resources and reduces success rates. It's better to fully succeed with 2 projects than partially complete 5.
Internal operations use cases often make better starting points. They're lower risk (customer-facing errors are more visible), easier to iterate (you control the feedback loop), and build internal AI capabilities. Once you've proven success internally, customer-facing applications become less risky.
Break it down into phases. Identify a simplified version or subset that demonstrates value faster. For example, instead of full supply chain optimization, start with demand forecasting for one product category. Early wins from simpler versions fund and inform more complex expansions.
Use these tie-breakers: (1) Strategic alignment - which better supports long-term strategy? (2) Learning value - which teaches more about AI implementation? (3) Stakeholder support - which has stronger champions? (4) Scalability potential - which can expand to more use cases?
Default to pre-built solutions for common problems (customer service, document processing, etc.) - they're faster and less risky. Build custom AI for competitive differentiators or unique problems where off-the-shelf solutions don't exist. Your use case evaluation should include 'solution availability' as a factor in technical feasibility.
Schedule a free AI use case workshop. We'll help you identify, evaluate, and prioritize AI opportunities specific to your business using our proven framework.