What would that AI idea actually save?
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Welcome to this week’s edition of CIOsurge!
In this edition:
A free calculator to put real numbers on your AI ideas
Why AI platform sprawl is eating enterprise ROI
What to do when your employees start building their own agents
Stay sharp. Stay ahead.
Before You Fund That AI Project, Run the Numbers
Most technology leaders I talk to have plenty of AI ideas. What they’re missing is a credible way to rank them. Without real numbers, AI budgets go to whoever tells the best story, and the biggest opportunities get passed over.
Single Fin’s free AI Use Cases Calculator is built to close that gap.
You sign in with an email and a one-time code, then enter your role, company and industry. The tool suggests AI use cases matched to that context, from CIO and CISO to CFO, legal and sales leaders.
Then you put numbers on it. For any use case, theirs or yours, you enter the hours the task takes, how often it happens, how many people do it, what they’re paid and what an error costs. You get back the work’s current annual cost, low, base and high savings, a three-year value and a two-week build plan. The report also lists the data sources you’d need, which is where many AI projects stall. You can download it as a PDF for your CFO.
For CIOs and CISOs who are increasingly asked to approve AI spend that starts elsewhere in the business, it gives you a common language. “Let’s run it through the numbers” lands better than “not yet.” It also lets your own team test an idea, like alert triage or access reviews, before you ask for funding.
Try it free at app.singlefinai.com/AIopportunitycalculator. If you want help building what you find, there’s an optional “Contact Single Fin” button.
How do you rank AI ideas today? Reply and tell me.
🗓️ CIOsurge Executive Forums
Our closed-door dinners for CIOs, CISOs, and senior IT leaders. Off the record, with no vendor pitches. Seats are limited, and every registration is approved by our team.
Los Angeles | Thursday, October 22
Realizing AI ROI: Governing the Ecosystem Behind It
At Perch, with panelists including Jeff Blair (CAA), Nick Reva (DoorDash), and former Dell CISO Tim Youngblood. I'll be moderating.
Request an invite
Atlanta | Tuesday, December 8
Proving ROI on AI Beyond the Pilot
At Chops Lobster Bar. Panel to be announced.
Request an invite
Only 8% of companies run AI on one platform
FICO’s State of Responsible AI 2026 report, built on a Corinium survey of more than 1,000 senior technology, data and risk executives, found that just 8.2% of organizations have adopted a single shared AI deployment platform. About one in five are actively working toward one, and 71.2% have only partially adopted a single platform. FICO chief analytics officer Scott Zoldi told CIO Dive that governance teams currently stop anywhere from 50% to 90% of AI deployments because they aren’t sound or monitored, and that a shared standard is what lets more of them through.
The ROI numbers show what sprawl costs. Only 5% of organizations said AI significantly exceeded their ROI expectations, and roughly 40% named security concerns as a barrier to returns on agentic AI, with about 38% pointing to data integration and quality. Zoldi said sprawl usually means shadow projects, systems left running, and hyperscaler token spend that delivers no business value, and he urged CIOs to push for an AI standard and stay frugal with new purchases.
Sprawl usually starts the same way. Every team buys its own platform, every pilot leaves something running, and nobody owns the total. The fix starts before the purchase. Put real numbers on each use case, fund the ones that clear the bar, and consolidate onto a standard you can actually govern. If governance is blocking most of your deployments, the answer is probably fewer platforms, with better rules on each.
— Zack Tembi
16% of AI users are now building their own agents
A Howdy.com survey cited by CIO found that two-thirds of knowledge workers who use AI also use agents, and 16% have started building their own. About a quarter of agent users have had to shut agents down, mostly because outputs were inconsistent or the agent never worked, and 7% have had to kill agents that went rogue. Luis Mesas of Sngular said the bigger risk shows up when an employee’s agent starts connecting to company systems and data without the controls normal software would have.
AppDirect CTO Andy Sen called shadow agents the latest version of shadow IT, and his team built an internal coding service so employees can build freely while IT keeps visibility into usage, costs, and data. His line on deactivated agents: “Failing and learning is fine. Failing silently is not.” Scaled Agile’s Andrew Sales added that governance should also give good ideas a path from individual experiments into enterprise capability.
You can’t stop people from building agents, and you shouldn’t want to. The people closest to the work often find the best use cases. What you need is a sanctioned place for them to build, a clear record of what each agent can access, and someone watching for the quiet failures. Treat every employee-built agent like a new system touching your data, because that’s what it is. The ones that work should become standards. The ones that don’t should be shut off on purpose, before they become another line item nobody can explain.
— Zack Tembi
🗞️ At A Glance
💡 CIO Spotlights
Barry Rozen, CIO, Fox Rothschild
Named Chief Information Officer of Fox Rothschild, succeeding Louis Pellicori, who retires at the end of the year after five years as the firm’s CIO
Spent the past four years as the firm’s Director of Information Governance & Information Security
Previously led security operations, engineering and architecture at AIG, with earlier senior security roles at Johnson & Johnson and Credit Suisse
Will lead the firm’s nationwide Information Services Department and its information and technology systems
Partners with Mark McCreary, newly named the firm’s first Chief Data & Artificial Intelligence Officer
Jason (JJ) James, CIO, Acumatica
Named CIO of Acumatica, the cloud ERP provider for small and midsize businesses, and joins its executive committee
Brings more than 25 years of technology leadership at private equity-backed and publicly traded companies
Most recently CIO at Aptos Retail, running multi-cloud SaaS platforms across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
Previously CIO at Net Health and Optima Healthcare Solutions, leading cloud modernization, cybersecurity, compliance, and M&A integration
Author of “Make IT Work: An IT Playbook for Mergers and Acquisitions”
