‘Across the board, organizations manage increasingly fragmented stacks today and expect them to remain hybrid tomorrow’
Here’s a hot tip for employers that are now dabbling in using artificial intelligence: The best way to get the utmost benefit out of AI is to deploy it deeply across operations rather than confining it to pilot projects, according to a new global report.
The report from Zip – a provider of an AI platform for enterprise procurement – splits respondents into "Builders," who have embedded AI deeply into their processes, and "Bystanders," who remain in early pilots or have invested little.
Companies deploying AI widely were roughly six times more likely to report clear ROI than those still piloting or exploring the technology — 39% versus 6.5%, Zip found. Only 17% of all companies surveyed have reached that level of return so far.
"The Builders are showing everyone else the way," said Nick Heinzmann, Zip's head of research. "Their edge isn't bigger budgets, it's treating AI as a team-wide transformation instead of another tool."
Company size did not guarantee success. Among organizations with 50,000 or more employees, 33% had deployed AI widely, yet only 11% reported clear ROI, which Zip said is proof that scale alone does not translate into returns.
"AI in spend feels inevitable yet unclear," the report states. "Leaders broadly agree it will change everything, but few can say exactly how."
According to a recent Cisco survey of 2,500 chief executives across 23 countries, nearly two thirds fear their businesses are underinvesting in AI.
AI factors into hiring decisions
Nearly three-quarters of organizations surveyed said AI now factors into staffing decisions, Zip reported. At 17% of companies, concentrated in the technology, pharmaceutical, and telecom sectors, managers must justify why a role cannot be automated before it is approved.
Headcount expectations diverge sharply by function. Over 6 in 10 (62%) leaders plan to keep procurement and finance teams flat or shrink them as AI absorbs more work, while IT headcount is expected to grow as those teams take on evaluating and governing new AI systems, according to the report.
Nearly half of organizations have already cut or consolidated roles because AI can do the work, or plan to do so, Zip found. This signals that workforce planning conversations with department heads will increasingly need to account for uneven, function-specific automation pressure rather than a single company-wide policy.
Companies built around AI employ roughly 25% fewer workers than their peers while achieving comparable or higher valuations, according to a Harvard Business School working paper.
Skills requirements shifting
More than half of respondents (56%) said AI and automation fluency will be the most critical skill over the next three years, followed by data analysis and decision-making at 43%, and supplier relationship management at roughly a third, the Zip report found.
"The staffing story isn't of substitution but of balance: human skills amplified rather than replaced by technology," the report states, "with AI selectively applied where it can outperform or augment human peers."
Despite that optimism, Zip's data shows a persistent gap between confidence and preparedness. While 84% of leaders described their organizations as "somewhat" to "very" prepared to manage AI's impact on procurement and finance workflows, only 26% felt "very prepared."
Zip's tech stack findings echo that unevenness. "Across the board, organizations manage increasingly fragmented stacks today and expect them to remain hybrid tomorrow," the report notes, adding that "orchestration becomes a required enabling layer."
Recently, AI developer Anthropic has announced it is committing $10 million to eight Canadian research institutions that are leading the charge for the development of the technology use in the country.
