Right now, if teams at your company are using AI, they’re most likely doing so for basics like handling routine queries, summarizing meetings, and speeding up ticket resolution. The results most certainly look good, and the AI implementation feels like a win. In fact, our recent AI Organizational Best Practices: 2026-27 research study of 759 companies globally confirms this sentiment. In the study, 95.7% of organizations report a positive overall impact from AI.
But here’s the hard truth: If your company’s strategy stops at automating existing workflows, you leave significant financial and operational value on the table.
The Automation Trap
When IT and CX leaders first deploy AI, they typically look for low-hanging fruit. They find a slow, manual process and layer AI over it to make it faster. Our data reflects this reality. Currently, 53.7% of organizations use AI to automate their existing workflows, rather than redesign how the work gets done. Furthermore, 69.5% of respondents believe AI’s role in the workplace is to support existing work structures, rather than revising those processes.
This approach makes sense for quick wins. Automating existing workflows delivers a rapid return on investment (ROI). However, taking this route creates a ceiling on long-term success. It speeds up an old process, but it fails to ask if that process remains the best way to serve the customer or support the employee in an AI-driven world.
The Secret of the Success Group: Redesigning Work
To understand how to maximize AI ROI, we must look at this study’s Success Group, determined by above-average baseline improvements across key business metrics directly from AI initiatives. Successful companies operate differently. Instead of just plugging AI into a legacy system, they tear the system down to the studs. They redesign how work gets done. They actively evaluate every touchpoint in a customer journey or IT workflow and deliberately decide whether AI, a human, or a combination of both should execute the task.
The numbers validate this strategy. Among the Success Group, 57.6% prioritize the redesign of work over simple automation. Conversely, less successful companies lean the opposite way, with 56.7% clinging to the basic automation of existing workflows.
The Hard ROI of Workflow Redesign
For IT and CX decision-makers, the business case for redesigning work is undeniable. Redesigning how work gets done and how teams structure it acts as a superior long-term strategy. When organizations take the time to completely redesign workflows with AI, rather than just automating old ways, they unlock dramatically better business outcomes.
Specifically, compared to those companies that have just automated existing workflows, redesigning work has netted the Success Group, on average, a:
- 25.9% bigger drop in future costs
- 14.0% bigger drop in existing costs
- 13.0% better increase in revenue
- 4.4% higher boost in CSAT scores
Think about what a 25.9% larger drop in future costs means for your operational budget. By redefining roles—such as having an AI agent handle triage and data collection while seamlessly passing the context to a human expert for empathy and resolution—you eliminate inefficiencies that basic automation leaves behind.
Taking Action in Your Organization
Mirroring the operational success of the Success Group requires a mindset shift. Stop asking, “How can AI make this existing contact center flow faster?” Instead, ask, “How do we best solve this customer problem now that we have AI capabilities?”
Evaluate your current processes. If you still force customers or employees through a rigid, 10-step legacy workflow that now just happens to feature an AI chatbot at step three, you need a redesign. Map out the journey from scratch. Intentionally assign tasks to the agent—human or AI—that handles them best.
By moving past basic automation and committing to a fundamental redesign of your workflows, you break through the ROI ceiling, optimize your costs, and deliver the elevated experiences that your customers and employees deserve.ts for the AI business. But the headline is simple enough: people are using AI more, liking it more in the moment, and still not sold on the ending.
