Australia & New Zealand firms struggle to prove AI ROI

Avanade has published research showing that only 43% of organisations in New Zealand and Australia use return on investment and business value targets to assess AI progress. The survey points to a gap between AI adoption plans and financial measurement.

The study found that 66% of organisations in the two markets had not formally calculated the financial return from AI and had the assessment reviewed by finance teams or senior leadership. At the same time, 88% said they needed to accelerate AI transformation urgently, while 68% said AI had not yet delivered financial returns that justified the spending.

The findings reflect a wider global picture in which businesses report strong confidence in their AI maturity but much less evidence of structural change. Across the full sample of 3,600 business decision-makers in 11 markets, 77% described themselves as established, advanced or AI-first in their AI journey, and 72% said they were highly confident their teams were using AI effectively.

Yet only 18% said they had fundamentally reshaped how teams operate around AI. Three quarters of respondents globally also said organisations present themselves publicly as more AI-mature than they really are.

In Australia and New Zealand, the research suggests many companies remain at an early stage in turning AI use into changes in products, services, business models or internal working methods. Some 84% said they had not fundamentally reshaped how they work around what AI makes possible.

The same pattern appears in reported outcomes. Only 23% of respondents in the two countries said they had seen transformational improvement in employee productivity, defined in the research as AI materially changing what they can achieve rather than delivering incremental gains. The same proportion reported transformational improvement in operational efficiency and lower business costs.

Measurement gap

The figures suggest companies are still struggling to link AI deployment to financial accountability. A quarter of organisations said limited budgets or pressure to prove ROI quickly was one of the biggest barriers to becoming an AI leader.

For boards and senior executives, that creates a familiar problem: pressure to increase investment in AI without a reliable way to judge whether projects are producing measurable value. Many organisations still appear to be tracking activity, such as deployments and pilot programmes, rather than financial outcomes.

Doug Robinson, Chief Executive Officer of Avanade Australia and New Zealand, said the central issue was not a lack of interest in AI but a lack of evidence of returns.

"New Zealand organisations aren't short on AI ambition, but they are short on evidence. You can't accelerate adoption responsibly if you can't say what your AI investment is returning, and right now, most can't," Robinson said.

He added: "New Zealand businesses' appetite for AI transformation is clear - that's why Avanade expanded here this year. Real transformation comes from moving beyond productivity gains and redesigning entire workflows around AI. The organisations that lead New Zealand's AI journey will be the ones that treat ROI measurement as part of the AI strategy, not an afterthought."

Shadow AI

The survey also highlighted governance concerns. In Australia and New Zealand, 39% of respondents said they believed colleagues were using AI in ways compliance teams would not approve of, compared with a global figure of 32%.

That points to the spread of so-called shadow AI, where staff use tools outside approved processes or oversight frameworks. Such use can create risks around data handling, compliance and internal controls, particularly in larger organisations.

The research covered business decision-makers from companies with more than USD $500 million in annual global revenue across sectors including financial services, consumer goods and services, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, distribution and transport. An independent market research firm conducted the fieldwork across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, India, Asia-Pacific and Japan.

Ben Beath, Chief AI Officer at Avanade, said: "Too many organisations are measuring AI progress by activity rather than impact. Deploying tools, running pilots and improving productivity are important milestones, but they are not the destination. What remains to be seen is whether organisations are truly changing and investing in how decisions are made, how work gets done and how value is created through AI. AI-native challengers are building these capabilities from day one, and established organisations must think just as boldly about the future they want to create."