FEATURE
The sandbox strategy
One of the most actionable themes was a‘ parallel line’ approach: create an isolated environment where teams can experiment without exposing the business.
You also cannot experiment recklessly with sensitive customer data, financial records or operational systems. Therefore, a sandbox – sometimes literally a separate network – allows safe play, fast learning and controlled failure.
Even when leaders want AI-powered customer support or an automated appointment booking, they discover their data is static, fragmented and not available in real time. AI agents do not thrive on spreadsheets passed around by email or systems that were never designed to be CRMs but ended up being used like one.
This reframes AI pilots. Instead of grand transformation programmes, organisations start with contained proof-of-concepts, small subscriptions, limited data exposure and narrowly defined outcomes. The intent is not to‘ tick the AI box’, but to test real workflows and see whether AI improves speed, quality or decision-making.
This is where transformation stops being glamorous. The work becomes unblocking integration, creating live data contexts and layering modern platforms on top of the old stack. The roundtable described this as building the connective tissue first so that AI has something reliable to act on.
The deeper tension, however, is human. People who have done things the same way for 20 years often experience new automation not as progress, but as surveillance, disruption or a threat to competence. The technology may be the catalyst, but the friction is psychological.
Trust begins with data
The roundtable repeatedly returned to a central truth that AI is not a plug-in.
If there was one consensual‘ next step’, it was to focus on data. Not‘ Big Data’ in the abstract sense, but the basics: accessibility, consistency, governance and quality. AI is only as trustworthy as the data it can see and the context it can maintain.
Several participants highlighted that organisations often want AI decision-making before they can even guarantee a single source of truth. That mismatch creates the illusion of progress while increasing operational risk. www. intelligentcio. com
INTELLIGENT CIO MIDDLE EAST
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