Beyond the 95%: The Back-Office AI Opportunity

👋 Welcome back to Balanced AI Insights

Everyone is quoting the new MIT State of AI in Business 2025 report for one number: 95% of AI projects fail.

It’s a striking headline, but it misses the real story. The lesson for CFOs isn’t about failure rates — it’s about where success is hiding, and why most organizations are overlooking it.

Beyond the 95%: The Hidden ROI in Finance, Procurement, and Admin

The MIT data reveals a clear disconnect:

• 70% of AI budgets are directed toward sales and marketing. Tools for lead scoring, outbound emails, and chatbots dominate board conversations.

• But the best ROI shows up in back-office functions. Finance, procurement, compliance, and admin are where companies are quietly saving millions by cutting BPO contracts, reducing agency spend, and automating routine workflows.
  

  

  GenAI Investment Distribution by Function. Source: STATE OF AI IN BUSINESS 2025, MIT

Executives admitted to researchers that this bias exists not because sales/marketing delivers better returns, but because those results are easier to show. Metrics like “response time to leads” are visible and board-friendly. Meanwhile, “month-end close finished 20% faster” is harder to translate into bottom-line numbers.

But that doesn’t make it less important. For CFOs, ignoring back-office ROI means missing the clearest path to measurable savings.

The Shadow AI Economy

MIT also highlights the “shadow AI economy”:

• Only 40% of companies have purchased official licenses.

• Yet 90% of employees already use ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot personally at work — often multiple times a day.
  

  

  Employee usage vs company purchase of LLMs. Source: STATE OF AI IN BUSINESS 2025, MIT

That reality creates both risk and opportunity:

• Risk — uncontrolled data use, fragmented processes, inconsistent ROI.

• Opportunity — free R&D. If your employees are finding value in these tools, their workflows point to where enterprise adoption will actually stick.

CFO takeaway: Don’t ban it — study it. Shadow usage is a roadmap to value.

Why Back-Office ROI Gets Missed

One procurement VP interviewed by MIT summed it up: “If I buy a tool to help my team work faster, how do I quantify that impact? How do I justify it to my CEO when it won’t directly move revenue?”

That’s the CFO challenge. Time savings often don’t show up neatly on a P&L. Instead, they show up as:

• Fewer late nights during close.

• Controllers taking real vacations without chaos.

• Audit prep done smoothly without outside consultants.

Over time, these soft benefits become hard numbers: lower turnover, reduced overtime, and fewer external fees. The trick is knowing how to capture and communicate them.

And that’s what we will talk about in the next section.

Deeper Dive: Checklist for Quantifying Back-Office AI ROI

Boards don’t buy into “people work faster.” They want to see numbers. Here’s a CFO-focused framework you can use to make back-office AI savings visible and credible.

Step 1: Track Direct Cost Savings

• Did we eliminate or shrink BPO contracts?

• Have we reduced agency or consultant spend?

• Can we quantify fewer outsourced hours billed?

Step 2: Translate Indirect Savings

• Lower overtime costs (compare pre- vs post-AI payroll).

• Reduced turnover → estimate avoided replacement/training costs.

• Higher employee engagement → fewer sick days, better retention.

Step 3: Capture Capacity Gains

• Did we process more invoices/contracts per FTE without new hires?

• Is our team handling a higher transaction volume at the same headcount?

• Are finance/admin teams now supporting growth without additional staff?

Step 4: Build the Narrative

• Link “soft” wins (vacations taken, faster closes) to hard outcomes (less burnout, lower attrition, fewer consulting hours).

• Position AI as a way to stabilize operations, not just cut costs.

• Frame it as risk mitigation: smoother compliance, fewer errors, less reliance on external providers.
  

👉 CFO Playbook: For each back-office AI use case, create a one-page ROI sheet with (a) direct savings, (b) indirect savings, (c) capacity gains. This is what boards will respect and approve.

Closing Thoughts

The MIT report doesn’t just tell us that AI projects fail. It tells us where they succeed — in the overlooked, underfunded functions CFOs manage every day.

The real story isn’t failure. It’s that CFOs are missing where ROI is hiding. Those who redirect spend into finance, procurement, and admin — and know how to measure the wins — will be the ones who cross the “GenAI Divide” and bring real value back to the boardroom.

Until next time,
Anna

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Until next Tuesday, keep balancing!

Anna Tiomina 
AI-Powered CFO