Generative AI Drives 70% Adoption and €1.2M Annual Productivity Gain

Context

An Italian multinational, family-owned conglomerate with 5,500+ employees operating across healthcare (pharma), consumer goods, and industrial technology sought to deploy enterprise Generative AI to close an AI knowledge gap at leadership level and drive measurable productivity gains. The program aimed for 50% user adoption within two months, 75% positive answer ratings, and at least one high-value vertical use case within six months. Prior to the program, informal, uncontrolled AI use—including 30% of employees accessing ChatGPT from work and 10% using it regularly without governance—created both opportunity and risk.

Challenges

Leadership resistance centered on privacy and information security concerns. The Data Protection Officer (DPO) and CEO were hesitant to endorse enterprise AI given potential data leakage and compliance exposures, despite evidence of significant shadow use across the organization. In parallel, technical support for industrial machinery relied on manual searches through paper and digital documentation; external vendors billed per ticket, the troubleshooting process was slow and error-prone, and successful searches depended heavily on specific search terms. The combination of leadership caution and operational inefficiencies created a pressing need for a governed, high-impact AI intervention.

Implementation

The project team conducted a targeted workshop for CEOs and senior leaders, inviting external experts to explain Generative AI risks, controls, and realistic productivity potential. By presenting quantitative data on uncontrolled ChatGPT usage and operational loss from inefficient support processes, the discussion shifted from “should we adopt?” to “how do we adopt responsibly?” This reframing, together with DPO involvement in the design of data handling policies, secured CEO endorsement for a controlled adoption plan with clear guardrails—access controls, approved model choices, audit logging, and a staged roll-out.

A technical workstream designed and built a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) based support chatbot, fed with equipment manuals, service bulletins, and historical ticket data. A one-month pilot with frontline technical support teams measured performance and user experience. The pilot demonstrated a 40% reduction in ticket resolution time; based on these results, the team oversaw the development of a production-grade solution and integrated it into the standard support workflow, including single-sign-on, role-based access, and change management procedures.

To accelerate adoption and literacy, the program delivered 40+ hours of instructor-led training and an intranet learning module covering safe prompt use, data classification rules, and productivity best practices. Internal communications and leader-led roadshows reinforced governance and showcased early wins. The governance team maintained a continuous monitoring dashboard to track usage patterns, answer quality ratings, and compliance metrics.

Results

The controlled deployment exceeded targets: 70% adoption among 3,500 employees within the first months, and 80% positive feedback on AI responses (surpassing the 75% target). Standard enterprise productivity tools reached 50–60% adoption during the same period. The RAG-based support assistant delivered measurable operational impact: approximately 500 active technical users saved 3–4 hours per week each, equating to a 20 FTE equivalent productivity gain worth roughly €1.2 million annually. The assistant also reduced external technical support fees by about €100K per year.

Beyond internal savings, the solution enabled a new digital service offering for external customers. Commercialization analysis estimated a potential €2 million in annual contract value from top customers (roughly €200K/year per top customer) by packaging the knowledge-assisted support capability as a subscription service. Leadership engagement improved substantially as well: the CEO and executive team moved from hesitation to active sponsorship, and the DPO approved the operational governance framework that balanced productivity with privacy and security.

The program delivered both the targeted high-value vertical use case in industrial support and broad AI literacy across the group through training and an intranet module, establishing a repeatable model for responsible AI adoption across other business units.