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StrategyNovember 2024 · 8 min read · Vyuhon Team
How to Write an AI Strategy That Executives Will Actually Fund
Most AI strategies fail to get funded — not because the ideas are bad, but because they're written for the wrong audience. What executives actually need to make a funding decision is a clear, credible answer to "what business problem does this solve, and what will it cost us versus what will it return?"
Start with the Business Problem
The first page of an AI strategy document that gets funded doesn't mention AI until the third paragraph. It starts by describing a business problem with specificity: not "we want to improve customer service efficiency" but "our support team resolves an average of forty-two tickets per agent per day, at an average handle time of eleven minutes. This gap costs us approximately €3.4 million annually."
From that specific problem, the document proposes AI as the most credible path to closing the gap — with reasoning that a financially literate executive can evaluate and challenge.
The ROI Conversation
Present a range, show your work, and be explicit about the key assumptions that drive the range. A well-constructed AI business case presents three scenarios: a conservative case, a base case, and an upside case. Executives who see this structure understand that you've done serious thinking, not wishful modelling.
Handling the Risk Section
Name the real risks honestly, assess their likelihood and impact with reasonable specificity, and describe the mitigations in concrete operational terms. "Model accuracy risk: mitigated through robust test coverage" is noise. "Model accuracy risk: we will not deploy to full user base until the system achieves 87% precision" is a credible, evaluatable statement.
The Ask
End with a specific ask: "We are requesting budget approval for Phase 1, comprising data infrastructure investment of €X, model development of €Y, and a twelve-week implementation timeline, with a go/no-go decision point at week eight." Specific asks are funded. General asks for AI investment are deferred indefinitely.