By Gertrude Van Horn, SVP & CIO, Cien.ai

“Every CRO wants to elevate the performance and impact of their Sales and go-to-market function. Every CFO wants ROI within a year. Every CEO is under pressure to quickly demonstrate the use and adoption of AI in a proven, low-risk, high-value initiative. Cien’s GTM Suite checks all the boxes by quickly delivering real actionable insights that lead to millions in revenue and growth opportunities.”

–  Gertrude Van Horn, SVP & CIO, Cien.ai

The Persistent Problem of AI Failure

The mandate is clear: adopt AI or fall behind. Yet, as we move into the latter half of 2025, the reality for most corporations is a high rate of AI initiative failure, particularly at the pilot stage. According to Tabish Ali in a November CIO.com article, studies show a staggering 80% of AI projects fail within organizations, and only 5% of generative AI projects show tangible success or make it from pilot to production.

CEOs, Boards, and CIOs are caught between two competing agendas: the long-term, expensive pursuit of innovation and the immediate demand for a quick, tangible return on investment (ROI). Executives want a successful, low-risk proof-of-concept that builds internal momentum and trust in the technology.

The major roadblocks aren’t the technology itself, but poor execution, lack of clear goals, and, crucially, dirty data. A Gartner prediction suggests 60% of AI projects will be abandoned if they do not start with AI-ready data.

Cien’s GTM Suite: The Proven Solution for Fast ROI and Proven AI

For the executive seeking a low-risk, high-impact AI win, external, proven solutions offer a significantly faster path to value than internal experiments. Cien.ai’s GTM Suite is Cloud and AI-Native, founded in 2016. It is a proven approach that provides the perfect AI quick win by focusing on the most critical area of growth: your Go-To-Market function. Our approach is built on speed, data quality, and measurable business outcomes:

1. Rapid Time-to-Value: We deliver insights and recommendations in just a couple of weeks—not months or years. Our AI system is designed to provide value in weeks, with full ROI often achieved within a year.
2. Data Hygiene First: Cien’s TrueAI models automatically clean, standardize, and enhance your CRM data, addressing core issues like completeness, consistency, and duplication. This immediately prepares your data for high-quality analysis, removing the primary barrier to AI success.
3. Focus on Revenue Drivers: The analysis directly pinpoints friction points and untapped revenue opportunities across sales and marketing, leading to proven growth acceleration.

What Does Success Look Like?

Success means transitioning from perpetual piloting to profitable deployment. Using Cien’s GTM Suite you can get started in days. No disruption.   Nothing to deploy or maintain.  Just results.
Your AI quick win delivers four major, quantifiable benefits:

1. Guaranteed Insights: You receive clear, actionable recommendations in just a couple of weeks, allowing you to move quickly from diagnosis to transformation.
2. Clean, High-Quality Data: Your GTM team benefits from enhanced, high-quality CRM and GTM data, giving them the confidence to make data-driven decisions.
3. Proven ROI: You are able to pinpoint specific growth and revenue improvement opportunities that can be deployed with proven results and ROI in less than a year.
4. Progress in corporate adoption of AI as a valuable tool and technology without a runawayrun-away price tag.  

Even a modest gain can be transformative. A seemingly small 2% improvement on a $350M revenue base drives approximately $7M in new bookings and can translate to $84M in shareholder value. Cien.ai delivers this essential, low-risk, high-value AI success story your organization needs to build momentum and invest in the future.

About the Cien.ai Growth Essentials Series

This article is part of our Growth Essentials Series, inspired by our work with B2B executives, GTM consultants, and PE operating partners. These articles focus on the non-technical aspects of improving GTM performance. If you want to dig into the technical details of how to measure the concepts we use here, check out our Practical RevOps Analysis Series.