“Hours Saved” Is a Trap: How to Actually Measure AI ROI
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97% of enterprises have deployed AI but only 29% report real ROI, and the gap comes down to measuring the wrong things. 'Hours saved' is a vanity metric that misses the bigger picture. The real value of AI adoption lands in three areas: speed (table stakes), scope expansion (teams tackling work they previously avoided), and compounding capability (structural improvements that raise the baseline for all future work). Most companies track tool adoption inputs instead of business outcomes. The recommended reframe is to ask three questions: how much faster are we delivering, what can we do now that we couldn't before, and are those improvements compounding or one-off?
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Speed is real, but it’s table stakes.Scope expansion is where the real value hides.Compounding capability is the long game.So why is the gap so big?Here’s the reframe I keep coming back to.Sort: