Most EMEA organisations have the intent to scale AI. What they are missing is a way to execute. On May 28, 2026, IDC’s EMEA Digital Leaders Hub brought together Martina Longo, Daniel Saroff, and Giulia Carosella for a live session drawing on 12 months of conversations within the Hub and fresh IDC research. Below is a brief overview. The full recording is available on demand.
AI maturity in EMEA in 2026: why execution, not intent, is the real gap
IDC’s latest MaturityScape Benchmark (EMEA, N=583) tells a clear story: 63% of EMEA organisations are still in the two lowest AI maturity stages. Fourteen percent are ad hoc: scattered initiatives, no coherent strategy. Forty-nine percent are opportunistic, running pilots but without the repeatability needed to scale. Just 2% are effectively scaling AI and Agentic AI initiatives across their organizations, including unlocking AI-driven revenue growth.
The journey maps from the (Gen)AI Scramble (fragmented, investment-heavy experimentation) through the AI Pivot (structured scaling) to the Agentic Organisation (AI embedded across operations). Most EMEA organisations are stuck in the transition between the first and second stage. The blocker is almost never ambition. It is the ability to execute.
Why AI adoption in EMEA is stalling: five challenges organisations need to address
Notably, 49% of EMEA organisations have already shifted their focus from launching new AI pilots to improving existing initiatives The experimentation phase is peaking, and EMEA organizations are no longer seeking new tools but instead focusing on making current AI work effectively first. But five structural challenges continue to slow progress:
- Competition for resources among digital initiatives
- Regulatory uncertainty slowing deployment decisions
- Resistance to process change within the business
- Difficulty quantifying and demonstrating AI ROI to the board
- Lack of executive sponsorship or organisation-wide buy-in
These are not isolated problems. They compound each other. Without a shared language for value, the resource conversation is difficult to win. The webinar addressed all five, and the one that generated the most discussion was ROI.
Measuring AI ROI: why cost savings are not enough
The most common reason AI initiatives stall is not technical. It is that no one agreed upfront on what success looks like. IDC’s AI Business Value Benefit framework maps nine dimensions where AI creates measurable impact, spanning Revenue Generation and Customer Experience through to Sustainability, Time to Market, and Business Resilience. Most organisations are measuring only one or two of these dimensions and are therefore systematically underselling the value they already have.
“Know what you want to achieve and how you will measure it”
— Alex Catmur, Commercial Director Digital, AtkinsRéalis
Three practices that came up consistently in the session:
- anchor every initiative to a specific business outcome before selecting any tool: Start with value drivers, not technology
- if no executive has a stake in the metric, the initiative will eventually stall: Align to KPIs executives already own
- productivity gains are visible; resilience and trust are harder to quantify but equally real, and the framework accounts for both: Separate direct and indirect value
The session also walked through a detailed case study of a global professional services firm that went from no shared ROI lens to confident scale decisions. If that is where your organisation is at present, it is worth watching the recording to hear how they structured the turnaround.
How the CIO role is evolving in the age of AI
IDC’s WW C-Suite Tech Survey (EMEA, N=300) makes the expectation clear: 42% of the broader C-suite now expects the CIO to lead digital and AI transformation with a major focus on creating new revenue streams. That expectation is growing faster than the formal authority that would make it achievable.
The digital leader of the future, as IDC frames it, is an architect of three things: Workforce (orchestrating AI-fuelled change management), Resilience (modernising IT for strategic alignment), and Value (demonstrating what digital technologies actually deliver for the business).
Three steps for digital leaders looking to prepare for this shift:
- not called in to implement choices that have already been taken: Get in the room before decisions are made
- accountability for results, not just go-live dates: Own the business outcome, not just the delivery
- design AI deployments to grow and withstand failure, not just to ship: Architect for scaling and recovery from the start
The session went into considerably more detail on each of these steps, including the structural and political dynamics that make them harder in practice than they appear on paper.
A practical AI transformation playbook: four steps that matter
The session closed with a synthesis that cuts through the complexity. Leading AI-fuelled business transformation comes down to four sequential actions:
- modernise architecture and data before scaling AI; pilots built on brittle infrastructure do not survive production: Fix the foundation
- anchor every initiative to a KPI an executive already owns; no metric, no mandate: Define the value
- redesign workflows and roles alongside the technology; AI layered onto old processes delivers expensive old results: Change the model
- run experiments to disprove bad assumptions quickly; promote only what survives to a funded pilot with a scale plan: Scale what works
Straightforward to state, harder to execute. The webinar covers what this looks like in practice, including the Q&A that followed.
The complete recording covers the full AI Business Value Benefit framework across all nine dimensions, the case study of a professional services firm moving from pilot to scale, the detailed best practice sessions on ROI measurement and the evolving CIO mandate, and the Q&A with the IDC analysts. If the topics covered are relevant to your organisation’s AI journey, IDC’s EMEA Digital Leaders Hub offers advisory support, benchmarks, and peer roundtables for CIOs and digital leaders navigating this transition. Reach out via the contact form to continue the conversation.