The underlying shift
A Box study across the U.S., U.K., France and Japan reveals a turn in enterprise AI adoption: organizations describing themselves as advanced or leaders jumped from 8% to 64% in a single year, while those just starting out collapsed from 53% to 9%. 80% report a notable return on their AI investment — defined as at least a 10% improvement — and more than half saw measurable business impact within the first six months.
The number that matters most
The gap between leaders and laggards isn't technological — it's execution. Leading companies built dedicated teams, formal governance and a structured content layer their agents operate on:
- 96% say their agents need company-specific internal data, but only 36% have it connected.
- 68% avoid depending on a single AI vendor, averaging 3.3 tools officially adopted.
Tech diversification stopped being a trend and became policy.
The Qualis view
The number that speaks to us is that 96% vs. 36%: nearly everyone needs connected internal data, yet most still don't have it ready. That's where ROI is won or lost. Preparing the data, defining governance and assuring the quality of what goes in and out of the agents is, today, the difference between a project that pays off and one that stalls. Execution is the product.