Alan Jacobson, Chief Data & Analytics Officer at Alteryx, explained how real AI success comes from business alignment, education, and ROI tracking at Data & AI Edge.

AI’s potential means little without proof, purpose, and business fluency.

In his conversations with hundreds of executives annually, Alan warns that hype alone won’t deliver ROI.

His playbook for meaningful adoption echoes ADAPT’s survey of 200 Australian CIOs: while 70% plan to increase investment in generative AI, only 25% have automated workflows in place.

There’s a clear gap between ambition and execution.

Alan notes that while nearly every enterprise has one live AI use case, few can demonstrate consistent ROI across ten or more, mirroring ADAPT’s finding that just 13% of CIOs consider their AI deployments successful.

One core challenge, backed by both Alan’s experience and ADAPT data, is measuring sustained value.

Initial AI projects are often easy to justify, but 50% of CIOs struggle to track long-term benefits, and 40% of CFOs remain sceptical of realised value from tech investments.

This pressure forces data leaders to move beyond simple prompt training toward practical, organisation-wide education and validation.

Alan draws a parallel with early dashboard adoption, where success came not from the dashboards themselves but from teaching teams how to use them meaningfully.

The same principle applies to AI: tools alone don’t drive impact without structured learning and sustained engagement.

His playbook starts in the shallow end: low-risk, high-impact use cases like procurement optimisation or summarising financial news for advisors.

The most successful organisations, he argues, aren’t the ones with the most engineers, but those who align AI initiatives with real business problems, track impact, and educate their teams.

 

Key takeaways:

  • AI success depends on leadership, not just technology: Successful AI initiatives are not about having more data scientists or better tools, but about leadership aligning teams around clear, measurable business outcomes; a point reinforced by the 87% of CIOs who say their AI efforts are still not delivering expected results.
  • Proving AI’s long-term value is a major hurdle: 50% of CIOs struggle to measure ongoing AI benefits, and 40% of CFOs believe deployed technologies often fail to deliver expected value, underscoring the need for better ROI tracking and validation frameworks.
  • Strategic alignment, not scale, drives success: Only 13% of CIOs consider their AI efforts successful, with winning organisations focusing on aligning AI with business goals and embedding it effectively, rather than relying solely on technical resources or executive ownership.
Contributors
Alan Jacobson Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Alteryx
Alan Jacobson is the chief data and analytics officer (CDAO) of Alteryx, driving key data initiatives and accelerating digital business transformation for... More

Alan Jacobson is the chief data and analytics officer (CDAO) of Alteryx, driving key data initiatives and accelerating digital business transformation for the Alteryx global customer base. As CDAO, Jacobson leads the company’s data science practice as a best-in-class example of how a company can get maximum leverage out of its data and the insights it contains. He is responsible for data management and governance, product and internal data, and use of the Alteryx Platform to drive continued growth.

Prior to joining Alteryx, Alan held a variety of leadership roles at Ford Motor Company across engineering, marketing, sales and new business development; most recently leading a team of data scientists to drive digital transformation across the enterprise. As an Alteryx evangelist at Ford, Alan spent many years leveraging the Alteryx Platform across the company and witnessed first-hand the impact a culture of analytics can have on the bottom line and what it takes to succeed as a data-driven enterprise. Alan will extend his role as an evangelist to customers, helping data workers and business leaders alike foster a culture of analytics and deepen their investments in digital transformation strategies.

Alan was recognized as a top leader in the global automotive industry as an Automotive Hall of Fame Leadership & Excellence award winner and an Outstanding Engineer of the Year by the Engineering Society of Detroit and works with the National Academy of Engineering and other organizations as an advisor on data science topics.

Alan earned his bachelor’s degrees in engineering from the University of New Hampshire and received his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech.

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