A global enterprise had 30 active AI initiatives across its business units but no consistent way to measure return on investment, making it impossible for leadership to tell which initiatives deserved continued funding.
Establishing an Enterprise AI PMO to Track ROI Across 30 Initiatives
Service Provided
Capabilities Utilized
Enterprise AI Product Management, ROI Measurement, Portfolio Governance
Client challenge
Each business unit reported success on its own terms — one measured “efficiency gains,” another measured “customer satisfaction lift,” a third had no measurement framework at all. When the CFO asked for a consolidated view of AI ROI across the enterprise ahead of the annual budget cycle, no one could produce one that would withstand scrutiny.
Our solution
We stood up an enterprise AI PMO with a standardized ROI measurement framework applied consistently across all 30 initiatives, translating each business unit’s own success metrics into a common financial-impact basis wherever possible, and clearly flagging the initiatives where impact genuinely couldn’t yet be quantified rather than forcing a number that wouldn’t hold up.
The PMO didn’t take over initiative delivery from the business units — it added a lightweight quarterly reporting layer and a consistent business case template for new initiative proposals, deliberately avoiding becoming a heavyweight bureaucracy the units would resist.
Results
The PMO’s first consolidated report gave the CFO a defensible view showing 19 of 30 initiatives with positive quantified ROI, 6 with credible but not-yet-quantifiable strategic value, and 5 recommended for sunset — informing a budget reallocation that redirected $4.7 million toward the highest-performing initiatives. The following year’s initiative proposals, now required to use the standard business case template, showed a 40% higher approval rate at the initial review gate.
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