Recent research from Forrester Consulting commissioned by Tines, Unlocking AI’s full value: How IT orchestrates secure, scalable innovation, underscores the essential role IT leaders must play in AI orchestration, as well as the challenges that stall adoption – and the opportunities that await those who overcome them. But how do these findings translate to real life, and what are leaders and practitioners doing to navigate this landscape?
To learn more, we asked industry-leading experts to share their insights and experiences. In our webinar, Unlocking AI’s full value: CIO and CISO perspectives, we heard from:
Mark Settle, 7x CIO
Trevor Schulze, CIO, Genesys
Indu Sajeev, CISO, ASOS
The critical takeaway? As the possibilities of AI expand to every area of business, with new capabilities emerging every day, it’s never been more important for IT leaders to ensure they’re facilitating secure, reliable, scalable adoption across their organizations.
Read on to learn more, or watch the full on-demand webinar to see the full discussion.
AI amplifies risks, but the biggest shift is cultural
AI doesn’t just create new risks; it accelerates the speed and scale of existing ones. Now, system vulnerabilities like privacy, data security, and biases can be exploited at an unprecedented rate. “You don’t need to be a nation-state actor,” Indu says. “We have this concept of script kiddies. It’s like that times 100.”
“With AI-charged means [of exploiting system vulnerabilities], I have less time to respond, detect, or contain, which worries me a lot,” she says. “That’s where we need to close the gap in terms of having defensive capabilities that can combat [risks] at the same pace at which they’re being exploited.”
At ASOS, a fully ecommerce retailer with no brick-and-mortar fallback, this is even more essential. “The focus goes back to the infrastructure element because that’s all you have,” Indu notes. “If that goes down, there’s very little to fall back on.”
It’s not a reprioritization. It’s really just a doubling down.
Genesys’s approach is to treat AI risk as part of the broader security framework, not a separate silo. “We’re putting guardrails around how data is used, how we access models, and how the results are monitored,” Trevor says.
But ultimately, the biggest shift in the threat landscape is cultural. “Things are moving really, really rapidly right now,” Trevor says. “It’s not a reprioritization. It’s really just a doubling down to ensure that your business model isn’t being disrupted, but also that the people working inside your company are able to act on these new capabilities in a safe way.”
Governance should be an enabler, not a blocker
As the Forrester study revealed, governance is both a top priority and a major roadblock. Over half (54%) of IT leaders say ensuring AI solutions comply with privacy and governance regulations is their number-one business priority for the next 12 months, but at the same time 38% cite security or governance concerns as the biggest barrier to scaling AI.
Scaling existing governance systems can be tricky. As Indu notes, there’s a lot of operational complexity within a business, including the existing infrastructure and tech debt inherited over time.
AI governance requires solid building blocks, like robust data management and controls. Without these fundamentals in place, any flaws just get supercharged when AI is added to the equation.
To address this, Indu recommends that practitioners take a principle-based, rather than policy-based, approach to governance. “If we have a safe level of education, govern based on roles, have proper traceability of data and access, and use transparency throughout the process, it becomes much more manageable and scalable,” she says.
Governance shouldn’t slow down innovation. It should make it safer to innovate.
While these foundations are essential, Trevor notes that the old playbook around data governance or overall corporate governance can only get you so far. “When you think of AI governance, a vast majority of it is data governance,” he says. “But AI touches new areas like ethics, transparency, and model lifecycle management.”
To take this playbook to the next level requires leaders to really rethink what governance means. But, Trevor says, ultimately their guiding mantra is extremely simple: “Governance shouldn’t slow down innovation. It should make it safer to innovate.”
Build employee trust through training and literacy
“Trust is a make or break factor for AI,” Trevor says. “If people don’t trust it, they won’t use it. And if they trust it too much, they’ll miss when it’s wrong.”
This tension shows up in Forrester’s findings too: 40% of IT leaders say their employees don’t fully trust AI outcomes, which risks limiting the ROI of AI investments.
To address this, CIOs and CISOs must focus on improving AI literacy throughout their companies. Both Genesys and ASOS are investing heavily in education.
“We’re really helping employees understand how the tools work and where human judgement still matters,” says Trevor. “The transparency of how this all works really builds confidence and it allows people to make good decisions on when and where to use AI. And when people can see how AI reaches an answer, they’re more comfortable using it as a partner, not a replacement.”
These are targeted, in-depth trainings, not your generalized ‘This is copilot’ or ‘This is ChatGPT.’
In addition to generalized training and guidelines for acceptable AI use within the business, Trevor and Indu highlight the need for targeted training programs based on specific workflows and user needs.
“We’ve started with cohorts that actually do use AI in their day-to-day work and roles that we envision will use it more,” Indu says. “These are targeted, in-depth trainings, not your generalized ‘This is copilot’ or ‘This is ChatGPT’. It’s more focused.” For example, if an engineer wants to build something, how do they do it securely, and which framework should they use? “It’s almost role-based,” she says.
“We’re tailoring training AI literacy for each function and skill set,” Trevor agrees. At Genesys, this means demystifying AI, addressing common misunderstandings, and getting people over the “first hurdle” of understanding. This empowers users at every level to be more open to experimenting in a safe way, which in turn delivers the best learning experience for them.
AI adoption and governance are shared responsibilities
Forward-thinking leaders see AI as a fundamental shift in how they do business, not just a technology trend. But to ensure AI really takes hold within the business, it needs support.
The Forrester study revealed that almost half (45%) of surveyed IT leaders say executive sponsorship is a key enabler when implementing AI orchestration. “As a leadership team, we have to make sure that we’re setting the direction, we’re living the AI strategy, and we’re prioritizing it,” Trevor says.
AI has brought IT and Security closer than ever.
To maximize impact, IT should also work closely with key stakeholders like Security and Risk teams. “AI has brought IT and Security [teams] closer than ever,” Trevor says. From rebuilding processes for evaluating vendors and managing data access to proactively thinking about how to manage and secure agentic workers, Security is transitioning from a checkpoint to a day-to-day partner for IT leaders.
But as technologies and capabilities evolve at a rapid pace, Trevor notes, the decision velocity is only going to increase, meaning the collaboration between IT and Security needs to become even stronger. To navigate the classic paradox – “IT wants to go fast, Security wants to go safe” – CIOs must bring everyone into the same room, define clear processes and communication channels, and use data to make informed decisions and trade-offs.
“My job as a CIO is to help balance [security and speed] and make sure the conversation stays really focused on outcomes,” says Trevor. “Ultimately it’s about enabling the business responsibly and finding the safest way to move forward.”
When it comes to orchestration, what’s old is new
It’s clear that orchestration is the missing link to scaling AI securely and effectively throughout any organization. Without it, the Forrester Consulting research reveals, 88% of IT leaders say AI adoption will remain fragmented and difficult to scale.
As Trevor notes, the key to orchestration is ownership. Every AI project needs a sponsor, a lead, and a team that’s accountable to delivery. IT must play a pivotal role as champions, connecting the dots between AI-ready data, the right tools, and the right security to execute confidently and deliver the right business value.
Without orchestration, 88% of IT leaders say AI adoption remains fragmented and difficult to scale.
But while the core best practices of orchestration remain the same, today’s AI capabilities embed themselves into business processes very quickly. This means IT leaders need to remain vigilant to ensure that each new tool or capability is set up correctly, balancing strategic business transformation with functional day-to-day execution.
“I think of orchestration as multi-layered,” Trevor says, “but having both [the business orchestration layer and the lower-level orchestration] work in concert, you’ll see the new speed of business accelerate faster than what people could imagine.”
AI is transforming business innovation – and IT must lead the way
Early caution about AI has turned to confidence as tools and literacy levels mature, and now teams of all types are looking to AI to supercharge innovation and efficiency. At ASOS, AI is part of the fabric of their business, fuelling everything from the creative ecosystem and customer experiences to technical advancements and predicting and combating security threats.
“I’m seeing all functions now finding really novel, thoughtful ways to leverage AI,” Trevor says of how Genesys is leveraging AI across the business. “Ultimately, when you start to experiment, you can reimagine how you do your job. That’s why I think all teams are eventually going to have their use cases by the dozens, if not hundreds.”
ASOS and Genesys are already experiencing the major opportunity areas unlocked by AI orchestration: enhanced collaboration, faster digital transformation, improved employee productivity, and reduced human error in critical processes.
As capabilities continue to advance, businesses without orchestration in place risk falling behind. To stay competitive and lead strategically, forward-thinking CIOs and CISOs must implement robust governance, provide clear guardrails and guidelines, deliver tailored training and literacy programs, and collaborate cross-functionally to set their businesses up for success – even as AI evolves.
Want to get even more insights? Watch the full webinar on-demand here or download the Forrester study to learn more.