Harnessing AI's Power for Competitive Advantage While Navigating Challenges

Artificial intelligence offers a remarkable opportunity for organizations to boost productivity, spark innovation, and gain a competitive edge. Yet, the journey to fully benefit from AI is complex. Many companies find that AI is not a simple solution but requires careful planning, strong governance, and a focus on security and compliance. At Fortalice Solutions, LLC, we help businesses deploy AI responsibly, ensuring they can innovate sustainably while managing risks effectively.

This post explores the realities of AI adoption, common challenges companies face, and practical strategies to unlock AI’s potential safely and successfully.

AI data visualization on a screen in a modern workspace

The Promise and Reality of AI in Business

AI promises significant gains in efficiency and innovation. It can automate routine tasks, analyze vast data sets, and support better decision-making. However, recent research shows that many companies have yet to see these benefits translate into improved profit margins or widespread value.

For example, a survey by Forrester Research of over 1,500 executives found only 15% reported better profit margins from AI in the past year. Boston Consulting Group’s survey of 1,250 executives revealed just 5% experienced broad value from AI initiatives. These numbers highlight a gap between AI’s potential and its current impact.

Why does this gap exist? One reason is that AI projects often lack the right foundation. Without clear goals, governance, and risk management, AI can produce inconsistent results or even mislead users.

Common Challenges in AI Implementation

There's never been a more exciting time to harness AI's power.

The productivity gains, innovation, and competitive edge it delivers are transformative—and accessible to organizations of all sizes.

But AI isn't an "easy button."

Unlocking its full potential requires thoughtful implementation, strong guardrails, and a focus on security, compliance, and reliability from the start.

Our team at Fortalice Solutions, LLC is guiding companies in deploying AI confidently, with robust governance, risk management, and security controls that enable responsible, sustainable innovation. If you're exploring AI, scaling pilots, or strengthening existing implementations, we're here to help.

Important lessons learned can be found in a recent Reuters article:

"One survey of 1,576 executives conducted during the second quarter by research and advisory firm Forrester Research showed just 15% of respondents saw profit margins improve due to AI over the last year. Consulting firm BCG found that only 5% of 1,250 executives surveyed between May and mid-July saw widespread value from AI."

"One well-known issue with AI models is their tendency to please the user. This bias – what’s called “sycophancy” – encourages users to chat more, but can impair the model’s ability to give better advice."

"CellarTracker ran into this problem with its wine-recommendation feature, built on top of OpenAI’s technology, CEO LeVine said. The chatbot performed well enough when asked for general recommendations. But when asked about specific vintages, the chatbot remained positive – even if all signals showed a person was highly unlikely to enjoy them."

“We had to bend over backwards to get the models (any model) to be critical and suggest there are wines I might not like,” LeVine said.

Part of the solution was designing prompts that gave the model permission to say no."

"Companies have also struggled with AI’s lack of consistency."

"Jeremy Nielsen, general manager at North American railroad service provider Cando Rail and Terminals, said the company recently tested an AI chatbot for employees to study internal safety reports and training materials.

But Cando ran into a surprising stumbling block: the models couldn’t consistently and correctly summarize the Canadian Rail Operating Rules, a roughly 100-page document that lays out the safety standards for the industry.

Sometimes the models forgot or misinterpreted the rules; other times they invented them from whole cloth. AI researchers say models often struggle to recall what appears in the middle of a long document."

"Cando has dropped the project for now, but is testing other ideas. So far the company has spent $300,000 on developing AI products.

“We all thought it’d be the easy button,” Nielsen said. “And that’s just not what happened.”"

AI Cannot Replace Humans

We especially loved this part: HUMANS MAKE A COMEBACK

Excerpt from Reuters:

"Human-staffed call centers and customer service were supposed to be heavily disrupted by AI, but companies quickly learned there are limits to the amount of human interaction that can be delegated to chatbots.

In early 2024, Swedish payments company Klarna rolled out an OpenAI-powered customer service agent that it said could do the work of 700 full-time customer service agents.

In 2025, however, CEO Sebastian Siemiathowski was forced to dial that back and acknowledge that some customers preferred to talk with humans.

Siemiathowski said AI is reliable on simple tasks and can now do the work of about 850 agents, but more complex issues quickly get referred to human agents.

For 2026, Klarna is focused on building its second-generation AI chatbot, which it hopes to ship soon, but human beings will remain a big part of the mix.

“If you want to stay customer-obsessed, you can't rely [entirely] on AI,” he said.

Similarly, U.S. telecommunications giant Verizon is leaning back into human customer service agents in 2026 after attempts to delegate calls to AI.

“I think 40% of consumers like the idea of still talking to a human, and they're frustrated that they can't get to a human agent,” said Ivan Berg, who leads Verizon’s AI-driven efforts to enhance service operations for business customers, in a Reuters interview this fall.

The company, which has about 2,000 frontline customer service agents, still uses AI to screen calls, get information on customers, and direct them to either self-service systems or to human agents.

Using AI to handle routine questions frees up agents to handle complex issues and try new things, such as making outbound calls and doing sales.

“Empathy is probably the key thing that's holding us from having AI agents talk to customers holistically right now,” Berg said.

Shashi Upadhyay, president of product, engineering and AI at customer-service platform Zendesk, says AI excels in three areas: writing, coding and chatting. Zendesk’s clients rely on generative AI to handle between 50% and 80% of their customer-support requests. But, he said, the idea that generative AI can do everything is “oversold.” "

Article:

"AI promised a revolution. Companies are still waiting." Reuters

By Deepa Seetharaman, Supantha Mukherjee and Krystal Hu

December 16, 2025