What CIOs can do when AI is live and usage is flat

The question, in the CIO's words

Why a usage report can't settle it

A usage report counts activity in the AI products you licensed. It cannot tell you why the activity is low, and it cannot see AI use elsewhere. In BCG's 2025 AI at Work survey, 54% of respondents said they would use AI tools even if not authorized (BCG, June 2025). So a flat line in your report can sit beside plenty of AI use that your report does not count, and some of it may be outside the data rules you set.

Our article Shadow AI: your staff already wrote your AI strategy treats that unofficial use as a signal worth reading. It shows which tasks people want help with, which tells you where the sanctioned AI needs to be pointed.

Where the return is decided

The AI Profitability Gap™ is the distance between what an organization spends on AI and the commercial return it produces. Underneath it is a chain: Investment, Usage, Direction, Skill and Reinvestment, which together produce Return. IT owns the first two links and reports on them well.

The three conditions that decide the return sit after usage, with other seats. Direction asks whether the AI work is pointed at a number the business already measures. Skill asks whether people can get more from AI than the first obvious use. Reinvestment asks whether anyone has decided what the saved time is for. None of these can be configured from the admin console.

Why this lands on IT, and why IT can't close it alone

The AI products carry IT's name, so the usage number does too. When the number is flat, the first question goes to the people who installed the software. But the reasons people leave AI alone are about their work: nobody pointed it at a task, the first try was disappointing, the process around it did not change, or they are unsure what they may put into it.

IT can fix the last one directly, with plain guidance on data. The rest belong to the CEO, the people leader and the leaders who own each team's work. The CIO is well placed to bring those seats together, because IT holds the usage data, the license costs and the renewal date that everyone else will be asked about.

In the AI Profit Bridge, this is the Profitable Platform row, what your AI investment delivers, working alongside the other two. Its goal is that every AI investment is tied to a clear outcome, or retired.

What to do first

1. 11. Pull usage by team and pick the two teams with the widest gap between licenses and active use. Ask their leaders which business number AI was meant to move.
2. 22. Publish one page, in plain language, on what data people may put into each AI product. Send it through managers.
3. 33. Ask a few teams what AI they use outside the licensed products, and for which tasks.
4. 44. Take the free AI Profit Ready Assessment and ask the business leaders who own those teams to take it too. It is eight questions and takes about two minutes.