The AI profit toolkit: What you should know before launching an AI project

Today, Sigli devotes considerable efforts to helping individuals and companies discover the value of cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence, and their influence on business processes. One of the most recent educational initiatives was a free webinar for SMEs called “The AI Profit Toolkit”.

If you missed our live session or want to revisit the key takeaways, the recording of “The AI Profit Toolkit: Benchmarks, Playbooks, Quick Wins” is now available.

The key goal of the webinar hosted by Sigli’s CBDO Max Golikov was to provide the audience with practical recommendations on how to adopt AI in a practical, budget-conscious way.  

In this article, we will share the key insights on how to launch AI pilots that create a measurable impact without serious risks.

What business value can AI create?

The impact of AI can be broken into several categories. The largest portion (57%) of AI’s business value comes from boosting productivity.

AI often helps automate daily tasks, reducing manual workload. Everyday routine automation accumulates 17% of the general business value. A share of 16% represents customer experience enhancements. 10% is related to other use cases.

Is AI the best technology to use today?

The golden rule number one that every business owner and decision-maker should learn is that AI isn’t required everywhere. It’s a powerful technology, but you shouldn’t use it unless you really need it. Instead, you also need to consider other tools. In many cases, their implementation can help you save money and, at the same time, achieve much better efficiency.

Before you apply AI, you should have a very good understanding of why you need to do it.

How can I estimate the profitability of any AI project?

One of the most reliable ways to do it is to apply an AI value matrix. It helps prioritize projects based on technological feasibility and business value.

The group of technological factors that should be evaluated covers data quality, technological complexity, as well as the availability of skills and people.

Business factors include business goal alignment, sponsor support, and measurable KPIs (like the decrease of time or resources needed for performing this or that task).

The project that will get the highest score in the overall results is likely to succeed and bring the most significant impact.

How to analyze technological complexity?

When you are considering the implementation of a particular AI tool, you need to understand how much time and what resources will be required to achieve the level when this solution starts bringing real value.

There are several core questions that you need to ask yourself:

• Is there a similar native feature in your current SaaS/ERP? (Today, a lot of systems offer their own AI functionality and it is possible that you won’t need to introduce your custom tool instead).

• Does a managed API already exist?

• Are there any latency or throughput constraints?

• Is it secure to implement this solution? Is a security review needed?

Those solutions that require minimal effort from your side (like low-code components or plag-and-play SaaS) will get the highest score according to the AI value matrix.

What does business goal alignment show?

This parameter will help you evaluate the link between the AI use case under consideration and a strategic or P&L (profit and loss) objective. Thanks to it, you will be able to move your focus from overhyped tech trends that don’t have any relation with your existing bottlenecks to mission-critical initiatives.

How can I understand that one AI pilot is better than the other one?

To answer this question, let’s turn to one of the real-life cases that the Sigli team worked on. The client was a mid-sized Dutch EdTech platform that has 175K active learners on its online courses. The main problem that the company wanted to solve was the reduction of time and resources that were required for user support services. Tutors used to spend 18% of their paid hours answering FAQs, which cost the company more than €1 million per year.

Our experts had different project ideas under consideration. Some of them were an LLM tutor-assist bot, a drop-out risk predictor, and an adaptive learning path recommender.  

As you can see from the matrix below, the first idea won. But why did it happen?

To launch such a bot, the company already had a rich set of labeled data (more than 22K historical chat transcripts tagged by topic). There were no specific difficulties in integrating the solution with the company’s platform.

It was possible to apply clear success metrics (response time and tutor time). And last but not least, the project received strong support from a single sponsor (it was the Head of Learner Success who owned the tutor budget and worked with retention KPIs).

As a result, the successfully implemented tool helped cut the median first-time response time by 84% from 8h to 1.3h and free 0.25 FTE (full-time equivalent) per tutor.

How to make sure that my AI implementation will be a successful one?

To maximize the ROI of your AI project, you need to focus on the key elements:

• Quick-win quadrant on the AI value matrix. You should select projects that score at least 7+ on Technical Feasibility and 8+ on Business Value. These are the ideal quick wins.

• Clean and accessible data. High-quality, well-organized data significantly reduces preparation time and helps avoid repeated model re-training.

• One primary KPI. It is vital to choose a use case with a clear metric that is already tracked. This makes "before vs. after" comparisons simple, and you can eliminate the need for extra instrumentation or debate.

• Single budget owner as a sponsor. Having one accountable stakeholder enables fast approvals, resource access, and sustained momentum.

• Measurable business deliverables. You should make sure that your AI project produces tangible, financial results. The goal is to prove that AI delivers profit, not just innovation for its own sake.

Final word

Artificial intelligence can help you overcome a lot of existing bottlenecks and greatly boost your business growth. But all this is possible only when AI is applied deliberately, with the right expectations and a strong business case. As you can see, the most successful AI initiatives are not driven by hype or fear of missing out. They are driven by clearly defined goals and measurable outcomes.

At Sigli, we are always ready to support your business at any stage of your AI journey: from strategy development and pilot selection to full-scale implementation. Don’t hesitate to contact us and learn more about how to turn the potential of AI into real business value.