How Companies Are Escaping ‘Pilot Purgatory’ With New Orchestration Models For Enterprise AI

*The views expressed in this article belong to George Korizis and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of any organization.

Corporate AI initiatives are hitting a hard wall. After years of performative declarations, a frustrating reality has started to set in: most AI projects are stuck in "pilot purgatory," an endless loop where promising trials never scale into meaningful business value. Now, as paralysis spreads, the first organizations to escape this perpetual state of limbo will likely be among the first to implement enterprise AI.

To learn more, we spoke with George Korizis, Partner and Front Office Strategy Transformation Leader at PwC. With over two decades of experience helping global brands improve their customer journeys, Korizis' expertise runs deep in front-office transformation across marketing, service, and sales. When asked how companies can escape pilot purgatory, he said they must first re-architect their operations around a new, more holistic model.

• The path to pilot purgatory: The problem is widespread, Korizis said. "Eight out of ten clients that I see get stuck in pilot mode. They usually have no issue creating small, isolated wins. But most of them can't stitch those wins together to make a bigger impact." The result is a collection of small, isolated experiments that fail to deliver transformative change.
• The anatomy of inaction: According to Korizis, AI paralysis tends to stem from a few different places. First, he pointed to a risk-averse corporate culture driven by a quarter-to-quarter mindset that demands simple, easily measured ROI. Eventually, this leads leaders down the path of least resistance: cost-cutting pilots in areas like call centers. While these can show immediate savings, Korizis cautioned, "You can cut your way into some profitability. But, eventually, you need to grow." 

The hyperfocus on efficiency is often encouraged by flawed, generic advice to "fail fast and fail cheap," which, Korizis said, frequently promotes isolated experiments without a unified strategy. Compounding the problem is a widening education gap. Because the technology has started to outpace humans' ability to understand it, Korizis explained, many executives have a "nascent understanding of what AI is and is not."

• The exit ramp: The way out of purgatory, Korizis argued, is to shift from building 'bolt-on' tools to becoming 'orchestrators of experiences.' In this new orchestration model, he explained, companies are responsible for managing their entire ecosystem across products, services, and third-party partners to deliver a more transparent, valuable customer journey.

• The experience orchestrators: Korizis offered PwC's experience supply chain as a trusted framework for this transformation. Instead of optimizing single touch points, he explained, the goal is to create a consistent and empathetic experience across the entire customer journey. Because it positions AI as the connective tissue across the enterprise, Korizis said, "experience orchestration is becoming paramount for B2B businesses to survive."

From Korizis's view, the front office is the ideal place to implement this strategy. Unlike cost-cutting pilots that often stall, initiatives in customer-facing roles gain momentum when they are explicitly tied to revenue metrics.

• The growth play: Korizis pointed to an airline that tested a dynamic pricing pilot as an example. "They demonstrated a 3% revenue bump, which they're now expanding to about 20% of their fares." The example illustrates how focusing on growth, not just efficiency, creates a clear path from a successful test to a scaled, revenue-generating reality.

Ultimately, even the best strategy will fail if it ignores the human element, Korizis concluded. For AI to be adopted successfully, it must be purposeful for the employees who actually use it every day. When leadership imposes new tools from the top down without considering the end-user experience, he said, they're often seen as a burden, or "just one more thing I have to do," as Korizis put it. Without a clear purpose for the end-user, even the most visionary executive ambition gets lost. "Otherwise, the initiative gets filtered down through a dozen layers of management before it reaches front-line employees. And by that point, it's usually just a punchline."