Businesses plan to increase their AI investments over the next three years. According to research conducted by McKinsey & Company, the long-term AI opportunity from corporate use cases equates to a possible a USD4.4-trillion boost to added productivity.
Tertius Zitzke, Group CEO at 4Sight. Supplied by 4Sight
With such prolific growth potential, it is unsurprising that 92% of companies surveyed in the Superagency in the workplace: Empowering people to unlock AI’s full potential report plan to increase their AI investments over the next three years.
Read the full report here: AI in the workplace: A report for 2025 | McKinsey
While companies pour billions into AI projects, the harsh reality is that 95% of companies currently fail to realise a return on their AI investments, according to MIT research.
Tertius Zitzke, group CEO of 4Sight, says the major issue is executives trying to stay ahead of the hype cycle by investing in the latest AI advances, rather than focusing on areas of the business where AI can deliver immediate impact and support a self-funded model through realised cost and operational savings.
“While agentic AI and large language models capture the headlines, companies can derive the greatest value from mastering and automating the simple, repetitive processes that too often bog down business growth.”
To address this requirement, 4Sight’s approach is rooted in practical, results-driven solutions, asserts Zitzke.
“Our focus is on deploying AI-powered automation where it matters most to deliver measurable return on investment (ROI) and unlocking agility, efficiency and innovation for our customers.”
To help companies across sectors move beyond the agentic AI hype, 4Sight partnered with Microsoft to showcase real-world AI point solution deployments that drive meaningful value for businesses at the Breaking Business Boundaries with 4Sight Automated Intelligence (4AI) event, held on 2 October 2025.
“This landmark gathering covers the evolution to 4AI and maps the adoption journey for companies, from culture and strategy to technology implementations and applications within the business,” explains Zitzke.
Attendees experienced over 20 real-world use cases across the business domains of people, stakeholders, finance, operations and innovation.
Presented in breakout streams, the showcased solutions have all been deployed with leading customers and vendors, demonstrating how intelligent automation is already transforming operations, workforce engagement and customer experience.
Real-world applications in the people domain included the simplification of workforce engagement via autonomous access to payslips, leave balances, documents and global training material. The showcase highlighted how AI-driven automation is transforming traditional human resource recruitment functions, such as CV sifting and employee surveys.
Applications highlighted in the finance domain relate to AI automation for procurement transformation, scaling automated ERP solutions for specific industries as well as delivering data-driven ERP Intelligence through AI Analytics.
On the stakeholder front, solutions were focused on automated customer experience intelligence.
“I opened the morning with why this happened and how to tackle this change. Our teams will show the important role smart data and AI plays in surfacing automated insights for cost recovery and sustainability, as well as an ESG Reporting Advisor,” says Zitzke.
From an operations perspective, attendees gained insights into practical approaches and real-world applications that help industrial and other organisations unlock value and drive sustainable growth through the productivity and efficiency improvements gained from AI Copilot assistants, analytics and dashboarding.
A showcase on digital energy innovations delved into visibility and insights from geographically dispersed energy information. Additionally, we will reflect on how the combination of Advanced Process Control (APC) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) can transform complex equations into real-world efficiency gains, with AI revolutionising process optimisation and performance improvement.
The event featured keynote addresses from Ravi Bhat, Chief Solutions & AI Transformation officer at Microsoft South Africa. Ravi focused on being an AI frontier in your business: focusing on enriched employee experiences, reinventing customer engagement, reshaping business processes and bending the curve on innovation, leading to an AI-driven cultural and strategic shift, securing your tomorrow, today.
Customer conversation sessions rounded out the event, giving customers an opportunity to share their experiences, challenges, barriers and learnings around AI adoption while better defining what success looks like from their AI investments.
“In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, businesses need to move beyond the hype to implement AI solutions that deliver real, sustainable value. This requires a partner that can guide decisions and pioneer AI innovations that empower businesses to break boundaries and lead in the digital age,” says Zitzke.
Source: Supplied by 4Sight