By Graham Roggli, Client Strategy Manager, Xantrion
What does it take to make AI work for you — not against you?
That is the central question of AI readiness. In the rush to adopt AI, many organizations have learned the hard way that success isn’t about acquiring the latest tool or chasing hype – it’s about embedding AI into daily workflows, governing it responsibly, and building momentum across the organization.
What People Get Wrong About AI Deployments
The most common misconception is that AI adoption is a “project” — something you roll out once and then declare complete. The reality is that AI creates value only when it becomes a habit. The organizations making measurable gains are those where staff use AI assistants every day, across functions, in small but repeatable ways.
To move beyond misconceptions and realize the real benefits of AI, leaders need a clear roadmap. From governance to security to data readiness, the following four takeaways highlight the practices that separate organizations that struggle from those that see measurable, lasting gains.
Four Takeaways for Business Leaders
1. Form an AI Steering Committee
AI adoption cannot be left to IT alone, nor dictated solely from the top. Effective programs blend executive sponsorship with frontline champions. A steering committee should include leaders from IT, compliance, HR, finance, operations, and client service, alongside your Xantrion vCIO. Its role is to set direction, review risks, and showcase progress. Most importantly, it should encourage experimentation — short “show and tell” sessions where staff share small wins and emerging use-cases.
2. Choose the Right Tools
There isn’t a single “right” AI tool for every situation — the key is matching the tool to the task.
Microsoft Copilot for M365 is the most natural starting point for most organizations. It brings AI directly into Outlook, Teams, Word, and Excel — places where staff already spend their day — and leverages Microsoft’s built-in security and compliance controls. For many employees, this is all they will ever need.
ChatGPT shines when you need flexibility, creativity, or reasoning outside of Microsoft 365. It’s especially effective for research, brainstorming, drafting external communications, or exploring “what-if” scenarios. Not everyone needs it, but having access for the right roles — strategy, client service, operations — can unlock significant value.
The goal is not to deploy everything everywhere, but to enable the right tool for the right person at the right time.
3. Secure by Design: Policy, Privacy, and Shadow IT
Security must be baked into your AI rollout from the very beginning. Without itstaff will inevitably turn to unsanctioned tools, creating real shadow AI risks. IBM’s 2025 “Cost of a Data Breach” report found that breaches involving unmonitored AI cost organizations an average of $670,000 more — a risk no business can afford to ignore.
There are three essentials to getting this right:
- Work with your vCIO or IT strategist to ensure your AI tools are deployed with the right tenant settings, logging, data protections, and compliance guardrails in place. If you don’t have an IT strategist, you might consider engaging a virtual or fractional CIO to assist with successful AI adoption in your company.
- Establish an Acceptable Use Policy. Set plain-language rules around which tools are approved, what types of data are allowed, and how employees are expected to use — and take responsibility for — the outputs.
- Acknowledge your staff are already using AI. The question isn’t if they are, it’s how. By providing secure, sanctioned tools, you reduce the temptation to “go around IT” and dramatically lower the risk of accidental data exposure.
The takeaway is simple: make AI secure, make it official, and make it easy — otherwise your people will find a way to use it anyway.
4. Prepare Your Data for AI
AI is only as useful as the data it can access. That means organizations must address data hygiene before expecting significant results. Start by inventorying where data lives, what types it is, who owns it, and how current it is. Fix oversharing by applying permissions and sensitivity labels, and move critical information into shared, well-organized workspaces. The more you establish a “single source of truth,” the more effective AI assistants will be.
What Good Looks Like
Progress is evident when AI assistants are used daily, across multiple functions, and staff can point to specific time savings or quality improvements. Leadership should be reviewing metrics and anecdotes monthly, and security teams should see fewer instances of shadow IT. The most encouraging signal is cultural: when employees share new ways they are using AI without being asked.
How Xantrion Can Help
- Xantrion provides the guardrails and expertise to make AI adoption safe and sustainable:
- Tool selection & vendor validation. We help you choose the right AI tools for your business needs — and confirm that each one meets vendor security, compliance, and governance requirements.
- Secure deployment & configuration. From Microsoft 365 to data protection and logging, we configure platforms to ensure they are safe, compliant, and aligned with your security policies.
- AI Steering Committee enablement. We bring vCIO expertise to facilitate your committee, guide policy creation, and keep adoption on track with measurable outcomes.
AI adoption isn’t a one-time rollout — it’s an ongoing journey of building habits, refining policies, and empowering your people. With the right tools, governance, and support, organizations can harness AI not just as a productivity booster, but as a secure, strategic advantage. The question isn’t whether AI will shape your business — it’s how ready you are to make it work for you.
