From pilot to production: closing the 70% gap
Most AI pilots never reach production. The reasons are organisational and predictable, which means they are preventable.
Marcus Oyelaran
Head of Performance
Why pilots stall
Pilots are designed to prove technical feasibility, which is almost never the actual constraint. They stall because no operational owner was named, integration was descoped, and success criteria were never agreed with the function that would run it.
Design the pilot for production from day one
Run the pilot in the real environment with real data, real volumes and the real owner. A sandbox proves nothing that matters and delays every difficult conversation to the point where it is expensive.
Agree the criteria before starting
Write down the metric, the threshold and the decision rule. Pilots without a pre-agreed decision rule end in debate rather than deployment.
Plan the handover in the first week
Documentation, training and a named internal owner scheduled at the outset. Handover treated as a final phase is handover that does not happen.
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