More than half (55%) of chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) are unclear on the return on investment (ROI) of their AI investments, even as 67% of supply chain digital investments are now allocated to AI, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc.

To achieve clear and positive returns from their AI investments, CSCOs must deploy a “rightsized” change management strategy that explicitly links change execution to AI strategy, supply chain strategy and broader enterprise priorities, so that change resources are directed toward outcomes and not individual activities.

“Organizations are getting better at executing change for individual initiatives,” said Lorraine Gavin, senior principal analyst in Gartner's supply chain practice. “The bigger challenge today is deciding where to invest limited change management resources so that they support the business outcomes that matter most. AI is making that decision more important than ever.”

Rapid AI evolution is causing use cases to proliferate faster than organizations can develop effective change management approaches to support them. Gartner research distinguishes between change methodologies and change strategy.

While change methodologies provide the steps and activities used to execute change for individual initiatives, a change strategy establishes how finite change management resources should be allocated across AI initiatives to achieve broader supply chain and enterprise objectives.

CSCOs should establish an AI change strategy that aligns change investments with business outcomes and protects AI investments from fragmented adoption.

Rightsized Change Management to Double ROI

As AI initiatives continue to multiply, CSCOs must move beyond fixed, one-size-fits-all approaches and deliberately align change investments to the outcomes they are trying to achieve. Gartner predicts that by 2030, organizations that rightsize their change management efforts in this way will achieve twice the ROI on AI initiatives compared with those that continue to rely on legacy methodologies.

According to Gartner research, CSCOs seeking to improve their organizations’ AI outcomes should:

• Establish a Formal AI Change Strategy: Institutionalize AI change management as a distinct strategic discipline that supports the organization's AI technology strategy and creates a foundation for intentional, outcome-driven execution.
• Prioritize and Allocate Change Resources Strategically: Treat change management capacity as a scarce resource and concentrate investment on high-value AI initiatives with the greatest potential to drive supply chain outcomes and ROI.
• Adopt a Composable Approach to Change Execution: Define different change approaches based on the scale, speed and organizational context of each initiative, rather than relying on a single standardized methodology.
• Build AI Change Leadership Capabilities: Develop leaders with business acumen, workforce development expertise and risk management capabilities so they can effectively guide AI-enabled transformation.