Decoding ROI from AI
Just 20% of companies are capturing 74% of all AI-driven value. We’ve decoded how, so you can harness AI to drive productivity, reinvention, and growth.
Are you ready to join the AI leaders?
AI is everywhere. But ROI isn’t. PwC’s new AI performance study reveals that a small set of top-performing companies—the AI leaders—are already translating AI into real ROI.
For these companies, using AI for productivity is table stakes. They’re taking AI much further—using it to reinvent and grow. They start with what matters. Build only what's needed. And scale what works.
Want to join the AI leaders? Here’s how.
Is your company AI fit?
AI fitness is the ability to focus AI on the outcomes that matter, build the foundations that enable AI to deliver ROI, and then rapidly scale what works—turning pilots into profit.
The most AI fit companies are getting a 7.2 times AI-driven performance boost—a combination of AI-driven revenues and cost reductions—over their peers.
Discover more about the nine factors of AI fitness below.
7.2x revenue and efficiency gains achieved by the most AI fit companies versus the rest
Why it matters
Becoming AI fit builds the muscle to pull more ROI from AI.
Shift the dial
Take stock of your AI fitness level by reviewing your company’s performance on the nine AI fitness factors.
Are you using AI for reinvention—or just efficiency?
The leading companies aim AI at growth and use it to innovate. They’re 2.6 times as likely as others to say AI enhances their ability to reinvent business models and 1.2 times as likely to use AI to drive revenue. They target where value is moving and tightly manage AI bets like an investment portfolio—with clear owners and metrics.
And the AI leaders win where sector boundaries blur. They’re 1.8 times as likely to use AI to find emerging value pools, three times as likely to collaborate across sectors, twice as likely to compete beyond them—and they fast-track “industry convergence” use cases with senior sponsorship.
2.6x as likely to say AI has helped reinvent your business model—AI leaders versus the rest
Why it matters
The biggest returns come when AI changes what you sell and how you create value, not just how quickly you execute tasks.
Shift the dial
Identify two growth bets AI could unlock this year and define what proof of success looks like.
Are your foundations fit-for-purpose?
The most AI-fit companies have strong foundational capabilities, including workforce skills, modernised tech, high data quality, and governance and risk management.
AI leaders also invest 2.5 times as much as others in AI, and do it nimbly—building only what’s needed to achieve their strategic priorities. When AI sits on strong foundations, it creates twice as much value from AI use.
2.4x as likely to build reusable AI assets—AI leaders versus the rest
Why it matters
Reuse makes AI cheaper, faster, and more reliable with every deployment.
Shift the dial
Design application components with reuse in mind right from the start.
Are you embedding AI across the enterprise—or in silos?
The biggest performance gains accrue when AI does real work on its own: making routine decisions, handling straightforward tasks, even improving its own performance.
The AI leaders integrate AI into every facet of their business, quickly scaling successful pilots enterprise-wide, and deep into complex operations. They’re two times as likely to embed AI end‑to‑end across the value chain—from corporate strategy to procurement, and from the back office to the customer experience.
2x as likely to use AI that operates autonomously—AI leaders versus the rest
Why it matters
Across all operational practices we tested, automating decisions links most strongly to AI-driven performance.
Shift the dial
Phase autonomy into a high-frequency workflow, progressing AI use from assisting to executing on its own within established guard rails.
How AI leaders outperform
Insight for action
as likely as others to use AI to compete beyond their sector
Insight for action
Why it matters
Capturing growth opportunities from industry convergence is the strongest AI fitness factor influencing AI-driven performance yet Australia trails AI leaders in using AI to improve business model transformation efforts: just 3% of Australian businesses compared to 59% of leaders.
Shift the dial
Use AI to help you map where value is moving in and around your sector, apply it to size those opportunities, model risk scenarios, test assumptions and identify new revenue streams.
Get in touch with PwC to help you identify opportunities
2x
Insight for action
the improvement in AI-driven performance when they bolster increased AI use with stronger foundations
Insight for action
Why it matters
Delivering use cases without the ability to repeat them reliably delivers lower ROI.
Shift the dial
Before expanding your AI footprint, identify the one or two foundation capabilities most likely to block repeatability and fix them for the highest-value initiatives first. For many Australian businesses one of the biggest blockers to scaling AI is data quality and access.
Get in touch with PwC to help you identify opportunities
2x
Insight for action
more likely to systematically track the business impact of AI initiatives
Insight for action
Why it matters
Without a way to measure results, there's no way to know if your AI investments are delivering returns.
Shift the dial
Stand up a monthly “scale or stop” review. Only projects with measured movement on a defined business metric get more funding.
Get in touch with PwC to help you identify opportunities
Learn more about your fitness
Download the report
What are the nine factors of AI fitness?
AI fitness is six foundational capabilities and three measures of AI use.
- AI foundations: strategy, investment, workforce, data and technology, governance, and innovation
- AI use: breadth and depth, sophistication, and capturing value from industry convergence
Explore the graphic below to discover more and benchmark your organisation’s fitness against sector peers and the AI leaders.
Want to test yourself? Our quiz will give you a sense of your organisation’s baseline score, and strengths and weaknesses.
Explore the fitness factors
Tap on the graphic below to learn about each factor—and how well leaders are applying them.
1 Breadth and depth
This factor captures how much AI is used across your organisation’s value chain and how deeply AI is deployed into workflows within each function.
The AI leaders’ score for breadth and depth is roughly twice as high as the rest.
2 Sophistication
This factor is a measure of a company's most advanced AI applications. Think of this variable as a spectrum—from using AI simply to summarise long texts all the way through to building autonomous, self-optimising agents. The AI leaders are twice as likely to use AI that operates autonomously.
3 Capturing value from industry convergence
This factor assesses the extent to which AI enables cross-sector competition or collaboration. That could be sensing emerging value pools between sectors, responding to shifts in customer needs, or collaborating across sectors to unlock new value from ecosystem partnerships.
AI leaders are more likely to use AI to derive growth from industry convergence, the strongest AI fitness factor influencing AI-driven performance.
4 Innovation
This factor captures how innovation-friendly—yet rigorous—a company is. Does your business have dedicated innovation infrastructure, like sandbox environments? Embedded ownership of innovation within business units? And a cadence of portfolio reviews to test, prioritise, scale and stop AI initiatives?
AI leaders are more likely to provide dedicated innovation infrastructure and conduct frequent reviews of innovation portfolios to scale up AI initiatives.
5 Governance and risk
The security, access controls, regulatory compliance processes, ethical frameworks, and oversight bodies needed to manage risk from AI design to deployment.
AI leaders are 1.6x as likely to have a Responsible AI framework that guides AI strategy—including use case selection, design, deployment, and ongoing monitoring.
6 Data and technology
This factor is the degree to which a business has modern, scalable platforms and trusted, varied data sources accessible to everyone. Also critical: reusable AI components and replicable, redesigned workflows in priority applications.
Compared to the chasing pack, AI leaders are more than twice as likely to have eliminated outdated and costly IT applications, systems, and infrastructure.
7 Strategy
The strength of connection between corporate strategy and AI deployment. Does the organisation have a prioritised AI road map? Is every use case linked to a clear business objective? Is business impact tracked? And is someone accountable for every critical AI outcome?
Watch Daria Vlasova, AI Strategy & Go-to-Market lead, PwC UK, explain how the AI leaders root their AI planning in their strategic growth priorities.
8 Investment
This factor measures the funding and resourcing for AI. Are investment levels sufficient? Can resources be reallocated as priorities shift while still supporting longer-horizon innovation?
Leading companies are more likely to invest sufficiently, reallocate funds with agility, and invest for long-term results.
9 Workforce
This factor is a measure of whether leaders and employees have the skills, incentives, collaboration models, and levels of trust needed to build AI and use it effectively in day-to-day decisions.
AI leaders are 1.7 times as likely as other firms to say their employees participate in ongoing, role-based AI-learning sessions. And those employees are twice as likely to trust the insights generated by AI.
How AI fit is your organisation?
See how you stack up against the rest of your sector and the scores of the AI leaders. Our short quiz will generate an AI fitness profile for you.
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A reconfiguration of the global economy means US$7 trillion is on the move in 2025 alone. We’ve mapped the value in motion from now to 2035, so you can build a future-ready business to capture it.
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