AI’s Last-Mile Problem: Why Working AI Tools Don’t Always Deliver Business Value

Nick Damoulakis is President of Orases.

At one point in an AI project, everyone gets excited. The team has tested the idea, the results are promising and the conversation turns to what it could mean beyond the group that built it. But expanding a controlled test across the business raises new questions about workflows, ownership and what needs to change.

Technology rarely slows progress. The harder questions emerge after the proof of concept: Who owns the process? How does the solution fit into existing workflows? How will the organization maintain it as the technology changes?

These questions are part of what is being called the last mile of AI. The organization has proven that something can work. The challenge is making it work consistently enough, and broadly enough, to become part of how the business operates.

A Successful Pilot Is Not The Finish Line​

Consider a customer service team that tests AI to summarize interactions and identify follow-up actions. During the pilot, a few employees use the tool successfully, and the team sees that it can reduce the time spent documenting calls.

That result matters, but scaling the idea requires different decisions. How does the summary enter the customer record? Who reviews it? What happens when the output is incomplete or incorrect? Is the workflow still efficient when the entire team uses it? How will the organization measure whether the time savings continue after the initial enthusiasm fades?

Moving from a promising experiment to something the business can rely on means figuring out how it fits into how people actually work, who needs to be involved and what has to change for it to work beyond the pilot.​

The Workflow Has To Change, Not Just The Tool

One reason AI initiatives struggle to move beyond experimentation is that organizations often add AI to existing processes without rethinking them.

The most valuable implementation creates a better way of working by connecting AI to the surrounding process.