Why Your Enterprise AI Pilots Are Failing—BCG's Juan Martin on Going from Pilot to Scale
February 26, 2025
Enterprise AI pilots, engineering challenges, business transformation—BCG's Juan Martin explores why 60-90 AI experiments end with zero production deployments. In this episode of Advising the Advisors, host Bolu Adeola and the Head of DeepGen AI discuss the three critical mistakes organizations make with Gen AI implementations and how to structure AI programs for real business impact. Juan shares case studies of successful transformations, including how one company increased sales conversion by 28% using AI-powered insights from 200,000 customer calls, and offers a practical framework for moving beyond experimentation to enterprise-wide AI adoption.
In our first episode of Advising the Advisors podcast, host Bolu Ben-Adeola is joined by Juan Martin, Head of Deep Gen AI at Boston Consulting Group and part-time professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Join them as they:
- Delve into how Gen AI has become more democratic and accessible
- Explain why companies should focus on programs rather than isolated pilots
- Talk about the surprising depreciation of Gen AI costs (98% in one year)
- Examine the implications of customer-facing AI solutions vs. human-in-the-loop approaches
- Shine a light on how BCG transformed a call center operation, increasing sales conversion by 28%
- Consider what skills and organizational structures will thrive in an AI-driven future
- Discuss how BPOs and financial services are creating "digital native" divisions to prepare for AI transformation
Juan Martin is the Head of Deep Gen AI at Boston Consulting Group, a global consulting firm. On top of that, Juan is also a part-time professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and was previously a tech startup founder in the NLP space with over 14 years of industry experience.
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Episode Highlights:
[00:00:05] Gen AI: The Most Rapidly Depreciating Technology
[00:05:51] Why AI Pilots Fail: Three Critical Misconceptions
[00:11:38] The Future of Customer Experience: Humans vs. Bots
[00:32:30] Real Results: How AI Boosted Call Center Sales by 28%
[00:35:48] Digital Native Companies: The New Business Model
Episode Resources:
[00:00:05] Gen AI: The Most Rapidly Depreciating Technology
[00:05:51] Why AI Pilots Fail: Three Critical Misconceptions
[00:11:38] The Future of Customer Experience: Humans vs. Bots
[00:32:30] Real Results: How AI Boosted Call Center Sales by 28%
[00:35:48] Digital Native Companies: The New Business Model
Episode Resources:
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