Blacklist to Breakthrough: How Organizations Adopted AI Fast
Twelve months ago, generative AI was the red button labeled “DO NOT TOUCH.”
Today it’s the engine running half the enterprise.
How did the same companies that once issued outright bans suddenly hand the keys to every employee, intern, and intern’s intern?
This Techronicler deep-dive asks the question no one dared voice in 2023: when did fear flip to faith, and who rewrote the rulebook without blowing up the company?
From internal ChatGPT clones guarded by military-grade governance to 2,700+ AI agents processing six million transactions a month, from “never on client work” to “core workflow,” the leaders who survived the fastest U-turn in corporate history reveal the exact moment they stopped running scared and started running the future.
Spoiler: it wasn’t the tech that changed. It was the humans who finally trusted it.
Read on!
From Ban to Operational Superpower
A recent MIT study found that 95% of GenAI pilots failed to deliver meaningful financial returns or productivity improvements.
From my perspective, two common mistakes stand out.
Companies often focus too heavily on sales and marketing, and many try to build their own tools instead of leveraging specialized solutions that already exist.
Where our team is seeing the real impact of GenAI is in operations.
At Digital Sportsman, our customers are using off-the-shelf tools to speed up tasks such as creating listings, drafting social media posts, and sending booking reminders to clients.
By automating these processes, they’re getting time back and ultimately running more efficient businesses.
Looking ahead, I believe GenAI’s biggest wins will continue to come from operational use cases that free people up to focus on higher-value work.
Anthony Hamilton
Founder & CEO, Digital Sportsman
2,701 Agents, Zero Chaos
Over three years, our company has deployed 2,701+ AI agents and digital workers across nine business units, which now process over six million transactions on a monthly basis.
But, before this, we had to set the right foundations in place.
“Our foundations were set with robotic process automation (RPA) and business process management.
It then evolved by introducing both traditional and generative AI, which have been able to take on more complex tasks.
The key has been re-engineering end-to-end processes in the most strategic way possible, right across the business, not just using generative AI for individual productivity gains.
We’ve found that this is how organizations can make the most significant gains.
The combination of AI, automation and orchestration has delivered dramatic results so far.
For use cases like ours, we’ve been able to speed up credit agreement processing by 95%, improve trade break resolutions by 20% with 100% accuracy, and accelerate customer communications by three times.
Now that the appropriate frameworks and governance are in place, leadership is full steam ahead with AI usage.
We have democratized AI by creating our own internal version of ChatGPT.
Backed by a robust governance framework, it addresses compliance and regulatory challenges to ensure secure, compliant usage.
This dual approach—strategic automation combined with democratized AI—has enabled us to really speed up deployment.
As organizations hesitate on deploying agentic AI beyond pilots and proof of concepts, our enterprise-wide rollout has proved that agentic AI can deliver measurable business impact when implemented safely, securely and at scale.
Satish Shenoy
AI Strategy & Execution, Startups to Fortune 500 Co
From “Never” to “Core Workflow”
Our early stance was strict: no generative AI in client work.
But as tools matured, it became clear we were leaving efficiency on the table.
At Search Scope, we reframed AI from a “threat to originality” into a “force multiplier for strategy.”
Now we deploy it to scan competitor landscapes, cluster keywords, and accelerate reporting.
The key is human oversight — AI drafts, humans decide.
“AI hasn’t replaced our thinking; it’s freed more time for it.”
That evolution has been less about technology and more about trust in how we guide it.
Dorian Menard
Founder & Business Manager, Search Scope
GenAI Runs the Entire Enterprise
Generative AI is now embedded across our enterprise functions.
In Research & Insights, it powers competitor analysis by extracting structured data from financial releases and earnings calls, surfaces customer signals from public sources, and accelerates market sizing through scenario modeling.
Sales Operations uses GenAI to transform dashboards into conversational interfaces, enabling leaders to query performance metrics—win rates, deal velocity, capability mix—in real time.
In IT Service Management, GenAI supports end users via service bots that resolve issues or guide ticket creation, while agents benefit from ticket summarization, resolution suggestions, and SLA anomaly detection.
Copilot tools further enhance productivity across daily workflows—automating meeting notes and action tracking, improving email clarity and tone, and accelerating document and presentation creation in Word and PowerPoint.
Security teams use GenAI for autonomous threat detection, while platforms like Netskope flag risky GenAI apps.
GenAI is now a strategic enabler of speed, insight, and scale across the enterprise.
Pankaj Dontamsetty
Vice President & Head of Operations and IT, Bristlecone
Fear to Full-Stack Integration
The adoption of generative AI in organizations has moved from cautious avoidance to structured integration in a very short span.
What began with restrictions and skepticism has transformed into a cross-functional enabler.
The progression has been natural, starting from development, where AI accelerates innovation and problem-solving, moving into sales, where it supports efficiency and scale.
From there, it has extended into go-to-market strategies, driving sharper execution and alignment, and finally into marketing, where creativity and personalization are amplified.
This shift has not been random but guided by governance, responsible use policies, and human oversight.
Generative AI is no longer viewed as a risk but as a strategic capability that strengthens collaboration across the value chain while maintaining enterprise-grade compliance and trust.
Ankit Srivastava
Director & Products, Ithena
Bans Became Governance Overnight
It’s fascinating how quickly the conversation around generative AI has shifted.
Just months ago, many organizations viewed it primarily through the lens of risk—concerns around data security, accuracy, and compliance often led to outright bans.
But as the technology matured and use cases became clearer, the narrative moved from “whether to use it” to “how to use it responsibly.”
In our case, we’ve seen a strong push toward structured adoption: creating clear usage policies, piloting AI in low-risk workflows like content generation and automation, and building internal awareness around ethical and secure usage.
The real turning point has been when employees themselves discovered productivity gains—suddenly adoption became less of a mandate and more of a natural evolution.
For us, the focus now is balancing innovation with governance so AI can scale safely and effectively.
Abhaya Kumar
SEO Manager, Algoworks
Strong Policies Enable AI Benefits While Limiting Risk
We had been cautious in our business initially and limited the uses of generative AI because of concerns about accuracy, compliance, and brand safety.
Within several months, however, we observed how the technology was evolving at a very fast pace and enjoyed how it could save time and boost efficiency.
Now, rather than blacklisting, we’ve targeted particular use cases:
– Content creation assistance (writing blog articles, social media messages, and advertising copy, always human-reviewed)
– Research support (brief summary and trend analysis).
– Internal productivity (preparations for meeting minutes, composing e-mails, and data organization).
The pivot was shifting from being concerned about abuse to having strong policies and guardrails in place: everything that is AI-generated is presented to a human before it’s live, and we’re transparent about how we’re using it.
This flexible approach has allowed us to harvest the benefits of AI while keeping the risks in check.
Matt Lasker
Director, Crown Billboard Advertising
AI Makes Real Estate Financing Smarter
I have witnessed how the real estate financing industry is evolving at a very fast pace due to the introduction of new technology- particularly generative AI.
Initially, we were not sure of its use as we feared that it may result in loss of data security or accuracy of risk assessment that we were carrying out.
However, when we tested the software, we found the benefits to be enormous and could not afford to overlook them.
Plugging AI into our loan-processing and risk-analysis tools have allowed us to make decisions faster and with greater accuracy.
That is particularly prominent when we are conducting due diligence: AI makes it significantly quicker to identify good investment opportunities.
Thus, in the world of real estate financing, AI is not a trend or a gimmick, it is an essential component of how we currently provide more intelligent and trustworthy financing to our customers.
Jimmy Fuentes
Consultant, California Hard Money
Cautious Rules → Crypto Recovery Rocket
At Crypto Recovers, generative AI has quickly become a game-changer.
At first, we were careful with how we used it, creating strict rules to avoid risks.
But as the technology improved, we saw how it could save time and boost productivity.
Now, we use it to automate repetitive tasks and provide real-time insights for complex crypto recovery cases.
By carefully introducing AI tools, training our team, and focusing on ethical use, we’ve improved efficiency while keeping quality and security a top priority.
Generative AI is now an important part of helping our clients recover their digital assets, and we’re continuing to explore its potential responsibly.
On behalf of the Techronicler community of readers, we thank these leaders and experts for taking the time to share valuable insights that stem from years of experience and in-depth expertise in their respective niches.
If you wish to showcase your experience and expertise, participate in industry-leading discussions, and add visibility and impact to your personal brand and business, get in touch with the Techronicler team to feature in our fast-growing publication.
