Automation

Macy’s wants to lower costs and unlock efficiencies, turning to AI and automation in its pursuit of momentum, executives said during a Goldman Sachs conference. 

The company has set its sights on simplifying and automating processes, CEO and Chair Tony Spring said at the event. “That has to do with embracing the power of AI as well as generative AI, that had to do with making sure that we were taking cost out of the network," said Spring. "In some cases, also speeding up the delivery of product to the customers where we were behind the competition.”

The retailer is about 18 months into its three-year turnaround plan called Bold New Chapter, which focuses on improving experiences and operations. While executing the plan, Macy’s has simplified IT operations and moved more workloads to the cloud to operate at a lower cost and have access to more capabilities, according to COO and CFO Tom Edwards, who was appointed to the role in June.

Retailers are working to alleviate pressures caused by economic headwinds and changes in consumer spending. Several leading brands are placing confidence in technology to push the business forward.

Ralph Lauren, Under Armor, Williams-Sonoma and others have recently credited AI for improving operations and lowering costs as turmoil continues. 

A year ago, Macy’s promoted CIO Keith Credendino to accelerate its modernization goals as part of the company’s growth strategy. Previously, Credendino served as SVP of technology product development for customer experience.

Macy’s has seen improvement from its AI-assisted turnaround efforts. Macy’s Inc. and its namesake retailer reported the strongest comparable sales results in Q2 2025 after 12 quarters of lackluster numbers. Still, tariffs cast a shadow on progress with a 2.5% year-over-year net sales decline.

Adding AI isn’t an easy win for retailers despite the focus. They face several adoption roadblocks, from high implementation costs to the risk of alienating customers, according to a Monday.com survey. More than 3 in 5 leaders in the industry worry about the consistency and quality of generated outputs.

More than half of CTOs expect AI adoption will trim headcount in the next five years as key processes become automated, according to a survey by digital consulting company Akkodis. The firm surveyed 2,000 business leaders, including 500 CTOs, for the report.  

As technology teams endure change, 59% of CTOs say they plan to internally reassign employees affected by ongoing automation efforts.  

Despite plans for widespread adoption, CTO confidence in AI is slipping. Just 62% of business leaders surveyed say they are very confident in their company's AI deployment plans, down from 82% in 2024. 

Businesses are working to infuse AI across operations in search of financial upside. While automation can free up time for more high-level projects, it might also translate to lower headcounts. 

Some businesses are already flagging a smaller headcount as AI takes over certain tasks. Wells Fargo CFO Michael Santomassimo credited process automation, at least in part, with a reduction in staff size.

“You can see our headcount gradually coming down quarter after quarter after quarter,” Santomassimo said last month, speaking during the company's Q3 earnings call. “We still have more to do there as you start to continue to automate more processes. AI helps on some of that for sure.”

Across sectors, more than 17,000 layoffs were attributed directly to AI implementation efforts during the first nine months of the year, according to a Challenger, Gray & Christmas report. Most of those cuts came from the tech industry, where the major vendors have been restructuring units in response to AI.   

But the maturity of enterprise AI implementation is still lagging behind the impetus to shrink the workforce, according to Martha Heller, CEO of Heller Search. Data, change management and other critical efforts for AI adoption are still a work in progress.

“Once we get to the point where we're better at doing that, then yes, I think we will see those CIOs saying 'I don't need these engineers anymore,' but I think we're way off it,” Heller said.

Financial services companies increased spending on cloud, data and cybersecurity to support AI efforts in recent quarters, in addition to beefing up skills and talent pools. Now, banking executives are on the hunt for tangible results.

Citigroup, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs led an industrywide AI push that has seeped into back-office operations, in dark corners containing legacy systems and as part of client-facing experiences. 

Speaking during earnings calls this year, executives from top banks highlighted use cases in pursuit of efficiency.

“We are committed to embedding AI into how we work,” Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser said during the company’s Q3 2025 earnings call. “These tools save hours each day by automating routine work, analyzing data and creating materials in minutes instead of hours.”

Citi has capitalized on momentum gained from modernizing underlying technology systems, propelling the business toward AI. Citigroup's venture capital arm is the most active in AI investments, of the 50 banks tracked by Evident Insights.

Amid deployment efforts, the company strengthened governance last month by adding a new head of AI to partner with its broader executive management team. Nearly 180,000 employees across 83 countries are using the company’s proprietary AI tools, according to Fraser, speaking during the call.  

Teams throughout the business are using the technology to resolve client inquiries, gain real-time insights, automate code reviews and improve productivity. There have been more than 1 million AI-driven automated code reviews this year, creating 100,000 hours of weekly capacity for developers, according to Fraser. 

Other AI use cases include risk reduction and customer experience improvements. Fraser said the company is now “in line with peers” in terms of the level of automation and preventative controls on the back end.  

Citi is also piloting agentic AI for about 5,000 colleagues, an effort that launched in September. 

“It allows complex multistep tasks to be completed with a single prompt, and the early results are very promising and we'll expand access to this in the months ahead,” Fraser said. 

Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency

Whether they peppered AI throughout the earnings report or only briefly mentioned it, banking executives were clear about their goal to bolster operations with the technology.

Wells Fargo executives only mentioned artificial intelligence once during its latest earnings call, highlighting a single use case: AI as part of automation efforts to drive efficiency. 

“When you think about the efficiency agenda … we still think there's a significant amount to do across the company,” CFO Michael Santomassimo said during the Q3 2025 call. “Some of that is people-related, headcount-related, and you can see our headcount gradually coming down quarter after quarter after quarter. We still have more to do there as you start to continue to automate more processes. AI helps on some of that for sure.”

JPMorgan Chase is thinking about AI’s impact on efficiency and subsequent effects on headcount, too. 

“For us, running a company of this type, we need to make sure we stay anchored in facts and reality and tangible outcomes,” EVP and CFO Jeremy Barnum said during the company’s Q3 2025 earnings call. The company previously estimated they’d have $2 billion in AI-related upside.

JPMorgan commands the biggest AI talent pool of the largest global financial firms, according to an Evident Insights’ annual report. The company has directed significant investment and energy into AI adoption, even before the current generative AI boom, according to Barnum. 

JPMorgan’s goal isn’t to make its leaders prove cost savings or productivity boosts from AI, which can push colleagues to “use AI in ways that are actually not efficient and that distract you from doing the underlying process reengineering that you need to do,” Barnum said. Instead, the company will continue to restrict headcount growth. 

“We're going to do the same this year: have a very strong bias against having the reflective response to any given need to hire more people and feeling a little bit more confident in our ability to put that pressure on the organization because we know that, even if we can't always measure it that precisely, there are definitely productivity tailwinds from AI,” Barnum said. 

Efficiencies are also top of mind for Goldman Sachs. The financial firm unveiled a centralized operating model, called One Goldman Sachs 3.0 that puts focus on AI-driven efficiency.  

The multiyear effort will build over time and progress will be measured across several goals, including capacity to scale, risk management and profitability.

“To start, we are drilling in on a handful of front-to-back work streams that can significantly benefit from AI-driven process reengineering and will help inform our longer-term approach,” CEO David Solomon said during the firm’s Q3 2025 earnings call. 

Responsible adoption

As banking institutions continue to fine-tune their technology strategies, responsible AI practices are critical to success. 

More than half of technology leaders at financial services firms point to responsible AI standards as a leading driver of ROI, according to a FICO survey conducted by Corinium and published last month. 

“Most organizations are not in a great position today,” FICO Chief Analytics Officer Scott Zoldi told CIO Dive, referring to the current state of responsible AI adoption in banks. “It’s getting better, but it’s nowhere close to where it needs to be.”

Fewer than 13% of organizations surveyed said they had fully integrated key AI development and deployment standards, such as model monitoring and bias mitigation. 

Responsible practices go beyond risk mitigation, Zoldi said. A robust governance program will put focus on explainability, transparency, training data and enforcement. 

“For FICO, it’s on an AI blockchain so that we can drive adherence to the standard,” Zoldi said. “It’s not just a motto, but really a set of standards that must be met and provide the ongoing rules around how you execute and monitor that AI moving forward.”

Creating a standard isn’t enough. Organizations must ensure standards are communicated and understood by impacted teams. 

“Visibility and transparency really empower everyone to understand what we’re trying to achieve with AI,” Zoldi said.

Enterprises are grappling with cybersecurity gaps as AI adoption rolls on, according to an Accenture survey of nearly 2,300 security and technology executives across 24 industries. 

While security posture maturity ranges, most businesses lack the cyber capabilities required to defend against AI-driven threats, the survey found. Nearly 4 in 5 businesses admit to lacking the foundation needed to safeguard models, data pipelines and cloud infrastructure.

Less than half — 42% — of organizations strike a balance between AI development and security investment, according to the report. Spending on generative AI initiatives was 1.6 times higher on average than security budgets from 2023 to 2024. In 2025, that number is expected to increase to 2.6. 

CIOs are under pressure to move AI projects along faster and demonstrate the corresponding value, but a need for speed doesn’t always translate to sustainable momentum. 

“Organizations are prioritizing speed and innovation over security, often treating it as an afterthought in the race to integrate AI,” Accenture said in the report. “This translates to a dangerous pattern: security controls are frequently omitted from initial planning phases, forcing teams into costly and inefficient retrofitting.”

While IT leaders and their cyber counterparts express concerns about AI’s impact on security standing, the business focus on speed and talent shortages are difficult to rectify. More than 80% of executives recognize the cybersecurity talent crunch as a major obstacle to achieving a better posture, according to the Accenture report. 

AI agents and the proliferation of automation are throwing a wrench in playbooks, too. 

“Just as with anything to do with automation, whether it's AI or not, it can create a bigger problem faster,” Steve Fenton, director of developer relations at Octopus Deploy, told CIO Dive. 

Some organizations are already working to mitigate potential threats. More than 2 in 5 business leaders said they’ve reassessed privacy and data security measures to prevent threats and misuse tied to AI, according to a Gallagher survey published in March.

Enterprise AI projects hinge on good data practices, but IT leaders still run up against challenges and the complexity is only increasing, according to an Ocient survey of more than 500 IT and data leaders. 

Technology chiefs point to data quality and the scalability of existing solutions as critical barriers to tapping into AI's potential in their organization. More than 4 in 5 of IT leaders say ongoing AI efforts have significantly increased the complexity of their data processing requirements.

Data estate expansion is also a pain point. Nearly half of leaders surveyed said their data estates were growing too fast, and 46% said the cost accompanying initiatives is a primary challenge. One-third of technology leaders don't feel fully prepared for the increased scale and complexity introduced by AI.

CIOs would like to bulldoze through roadblocks to AI success, but some challenges are more arduous than others. The complexity accompanying widescale, comprehensive data strategies is one of the more stubborn barriers to success.

"Enterprises really need to ensure their data foundations are strong," Eden Zoller, chief analyst of applied AI at Omdia, told CIO Dive. "A lot of enterprises still have fragmented data across different departments and functions, stored in inconsistent formats prone to inaccuracies."

Data has been a critical topic for the C-suite for years, but challenges have been amplified by the rush to adopt AI. CIOs who can help their enterprise avoid wasted resources and failed pilots by identifying and addressing critical gaps are invaluable in the pursuit of AI gains. 

“You cannot make full use of AI within your enterprise if you don’t … understand your data, contextualize your data and have a strategy in place around unstructured data,” said Leo Gergs, principal analyst at ABI Research. “It will define the success of every company.”

To chart a path forward, CIOs need to take stock of where processes are currently. C-suite leaders can collaborate to define desired outcomes and set their teams on the right track. 

Understanding where fragmentation is occurring can be a valuable place to start, Gergs said. 

“There’s some of the less advanced methods, like pen and paper,” Gergs said. “Some data is still stored on floppy disks. That gives you an idea of how fragmented this landscape is at the moment.”

CIOs must also recognize the cost-driven nature of conversations to get other C-suite and board members to support with the level of investment needed. 

“If you can prove the business case and a reliable return on investment, that is worth a lot with many of these enterprises operating in harsh environments,” Gergs said. 

Getting C-suite alignment on improving data processes won’t be hard for most organizations, despite the economic conditions. Appetite for AI has only increased over the past few years, and leaders see the technology as a way to alleviate pressure and drive efficiencies. 

“It’s important, as well, to take your workforce on that journey,” Gergs said. “It needs to be a combination of a top-down, bottom-up approach … because you need buy-in from both directions.”

Businesses have begun to reap the rewards of sustained focus on data governance and strategy. American Honda, Expedia Group and CarMax have all touted AI-related benefits as a result of their efforts to strengthen data processes.

Full AI implementation has nearly quadrupled in the last 12 months, from just 11% in 2024 to 42% in 2025, according to Salesforce’s second annual CIO study. AI is also driving a closer working relationship between CIOs and CEOs. Salesforce conducted an online survey of 200 global CIOs in collaboration with NewtonX for the study. 

AI agents in particular are demonstrating measurable impact, with 96% of CIOs reporting that their companies either use or plan to use agentic AI in the next two years. Executives also reported their AI budgets have nearly doubled, with CIOs dedicating 30% to agentic AI. 

“CIOs are turning AI ambition into action and scaling agentic AI in real, measurable ways,” Salesforce CIO Daniel Shmitt said in the report.                                                                                                                  

CIO confidence in their roles and AI knowledge has risen as the tech leaders move beyond experimentation and into scaling the technology across the enterprise. 

A majority – 75% – of CIOs reported feeling more confident in their role now than they did in 2024, the Salesforce study found. Another 97% of CIOs said they know more about AI than last year.

“Embedding AI into the flow of work and building trust into every step helps everyone move faster and with more confidence,” Shmitt said. 

CIOs also report working more closely with CEOs over other C-suite executives, with agentic AI propelling greater scope and importance for their role, according to the Salesforce report. 

A survey from Deloitte of more than 600 U.S.-based senior technology leaders echoed findings that CIOs are being recognized as enterprise leaders more broadly. The survey found that 80% have seen their roles significantly expanded and that 65% of CIOs are now reporting directly to the CEO, up from 41% a decade ago, according to Deloitte. 

About two-thirds of CIOs reporting directly to a CEO said this leadership structure better positions them to improve business strategies and results, Deloitte said. 

Agentic AI has also pushed CIOs to expand their skillsets, Salesforce found, with 61% reporting improvement in their leadership skills and 55% noting advancements in change management and communication. Another 57% saw better narrative-building skill sets. 

As CIOs gain authority over AI agents, 65% said they’re working more closely with their customer service teams – an area CIOs ranked No. 1 for best agentic AI use cases, the study found.

As businesses pursue widescale AI implementation, the wave of change has hit the CIO office, with nearly two-thirds of executives saying the technology has redefined their roles, according to a report from Atera. The IT management vendor surveyed 1,000 CIOs and VPs of IT for the report.

Almost half of CIOs say their responsibility over business value has increased in the wake of AI deployments. More than 2 in 5 execs say they're more frequently tasked with enabling collaboration between humans and AI.

Despite the expansion in purview, CIOs report that execution is difficult. More than two-thirds of tech chiefs describe the management of cross-functional initiatives alongside core operations maintenance as moderate or extremely challenging.

CIO popularity in the C-suite spiked amid promises of AI-fueled productivity gains. Agentic implementations stoked the fire, escalating questions about governance and data readiness for CIOs.

Most tech chiefs also report feeling more confident in their roles compared with last year amid the heightened importance of AI implementations, a Salesforce study published last month found. Nearly all CIOs said they know more about AI than they did last year.

“The data is clear: AI agents have unlocked an entirely new reality, one where they are capable of anticipating, learning, and taking actions autonomously,” said Atera CEO Gil Pekelman in a press release accompanying the study. “The CIO mandate is now to lead enterprise IT with AI — driving measurable business value across the organization.”

But the path toward a fully AI-driven IT department remains a work in progress for most businesses.

Just 15% of IT application leaders say their companies are piloting, deploying or even considering fully autonomous AI agents that don't depend on human oversight, according to Gartner research published in September. CIOs are still giving serious consideration to the technology, as 75% pilot some form of agentic AI.

As demand for automated IT operations grows, vendors are stepping up their services. AWS unveiled an agentic AI platform called AWS Transform earlier this year that aims to help businesses automate the modernization of legacy workloads. Microsoft expanded Copilot Studio so that enterprises can build more advanced agents and access more data sources.