96: Using AI Adoption Strategies That Actually Deliver ROI for Your Business with Jim Spignardo

**Jim Spignardo** (0:00)
Not all AI being equal. If you're talking about trying to bring something into the organization that's going to be transformational, it should have enterprise capabilities.

**Chris Daigle** (0:08)
Where are most people coming to you today, and where were they, say, three, six months ago? Is it the same?

**Jim Spignardo** (0:14)
Most organizations are now coming to us with the story of, we've purchased X amount of licenses or we've invested in this platform, but we're still not clear on the direction we should be taking, whether what they're doing or how we're using it is secure.

**Chris Daigle** (0:30)
How long until they start seeing relief or they start seeing pilots successful?

**Jim Spignardo** (0:34)
I think, you know, it's not unrealistic to think that in within six months' time frame, you know, they can recoup their investment in whatever tools we're using.

**Chris Daigle** (0:43)
So let me switch gears a little bit. What are you looking forward to the most or what are you most excited about with what's happening with the tools right now?

**Jim Spignardo** (0:50)
There's just so much. You know, I've really kind of leaned into a lot of these things. I'm a big fan of home automation. I've really automated the heck out of my house. And so I'm really excited and a little nervous about seeing the convergence of robotics and AI.

**Chris Daigle** (1:05)
Jim Spignardo is a cloud strategy and AI enablement leader at ProArch, helping companies cut through AI hype and build secure, practical workflows that drive adoption, improve productivity, and deliver real ROI. Welcome to Using AI at Work. I'm your host, Chris Daigle. Each week, we'll be learning how today's business owners, entrepreneurs, and ambitious professionals are getting more done with smart use of tomorrow's tech. Let's get started. Right now, every business leader is asking the same question. What are we going to do about AI? If this is you, chiefaiofficer.com has the answer. We'll give you a simple path forward where we provide executive and team training so your people know exactly how to safely use generative AI in their day to day.
We also manage the deployment and implementation to make sure tools actually get adopted and deliver results. And we'll also guide company-wide transformation so AI becomes part of your operating system, not just another shiny object. The companies that act now will increase productivity, cut costs, and grow faster than their competitors. Those that wait will get left behind. So if you want to make AI work in your business, visit chiefaiofficer.com and see how we're helping companies of all sizes finally get results from AI. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Using AI at Work. My name is Chris Daigle and I'm the host of the show. And today our guest is Jim Spignardo. And Jim and I have been trying to do this for a month and a half, at least with some misconnections. But finally, we're on for today. And Jim is with ProArch, and they are providing technical services for enterprise and lower middle market and above-size companies. But his role in particular is cloud strategy and AI enablement for these clients. So today we're going to be talking about, in particular, I want to know like the patterns that he's seeing, the trends he's seeing, so that you as a listener can kind of hear how others are generally doing things or where they are on the AI journey and figure out where you stand as far as your preparedness and your, you know, like, are you playing the game at the level you should be? So, Jim, before we jump in, I always give the guests a chance to let the listener know what they should expect to walk away with today.

**Jim Spignardo** (3:11)
Yeah, so hopefully this will be a nice back and forth conversation between yourself and myself, Chris. You know, I love just spending time giving the word out to customers, clients, folks who are just getting started on their AI journeys to have them get a better appreciation for, you know, what is this technology going to do to their industry specifically, but the workplace in general? Yeah, there's a lot of fear, uncertainty and doubt right now. A lot of organizations are still struggling with, you know, what are we supposed to be doing? Are we behind? Are we ahead?
Do we even have a spell AI? So part of that is just hopefully helping organizations understand that it's better to do it right than to do it fast, essentially.

**Chris Daigle** (4:08)
100%. There's a lot of people out there that feel the, like an urgency to do it fast. And I'll tell you, one of the things that I've noticed a trend with talking to, because we do a lot of like presentations to YPO groups and Vistage and professional organizations. And I'm hearing three common, I guess, points of contention when it comes to AI. They want to do it, but they don't understand the risk. So it like can't go all crazy if we don't understand the risk. They want to do it, but they're having a hard time figuring out where do we start. So use case identification, pilot project identification. And the third one is we'd love to get started, but we don't have anybody that can lead this for us. Like we need help. We don't have anybody, right?