Lessons from the Global Frontlines: How HP, Lucidia, and Al Rajhi Bank Turned AI Hype into Hard ROI

At NoLimits Riyadh, we brought together four visionary leaders to discuss one of the most pressing questions facing organizations today: How do you turn AI investments into real business impact?

The panel, featuring Abdullah Asiri (Founder & CEO, Lucidia), Stefano Bertamini (Board Member, AI966 and former CEO of Al Rajhi Bank), Greg Baxter (Chief Digital and Transformation Officer, HP Inc.), and Hosem Alduriay (CTO, Saudi Az), delivered insights that every business leader can use.

The ROI Reality Check

Asiri's company, Lucidia, is helping one of the region's largest e-commerce platforms save over $7 million by replacing 500 seasonal customer support agents with AI-powered solutions. But he was quick to add a crucial caveat: "AI isn't a silver bullet. You can't just throw it at any problem and expect it to magically solve everything."

Greg Baxter echoed this sentiment from HP's perspective, emphasizing that the key metric shouldn't be about AI at all, it should be about the problem you're solving. When HP deployed Microsoft Copilot across 20,000 employees, they saw only a 3% productivity improvement because they hadn't clearly defined the problem they were trying to solve. In contrast, their focused initiatives in software development, content creation, and customer support delivered 20-30% productivity gains.

Three Keys to AI Success

1. Start with the Problem, Not the Technology

"The important thing on ROI is focus on the problem and metrics of the problem, not on the technology," Baxter emphasized. This seemingly simple insight explains why MIT reports that 95% of AI projects fail.

2. Get Your Data House in Order

Stefano Bertamini was direct about a challenge many organizations face: "A lot of organizations aren't ready because their data isn't ready. It's sitting in different systems. The definitions don't align. The systems don't talk to each other."

AI hasn't solved the data problem: if anything, it's made it more urgent. Organizations that haven't invested in proper data foundations and governance frameworks are finding their AI ambitions blocked at every turn.

3. Win Hearts, Heads, and Hands

Baxter shared HP's approach to organizational change: "You need to have a compelling and ambitious vision for the company in a digital and AI world. Once you've excited them and won over their heart, then it's about training and developing them - winning their heads. Only then do you get their hands involved."

The Cultural and Governance Challenge

For companies operating across diverse markets, cultural sensitivity isn't optional. Asiri explained how Lucidia builds proprietary models trained on local data to ensure cultural alignment: "Some things are not acceptable to say to customers in this region. Some emojis are not acceptable to share. We need AI that is culturally aware and aligns with local values."

On the governance front, Bertamini outlined the non-negotiables: secure firewalls to protect customer data, clear ethics frameworks to prevent bias, and increasing regulatory transparency requirements. "If someone wrote a newspaper article about how you went about this, would you be happy with that?" he asked - a powerful litmus test for any AI implementation.

Looking Five Years Ahead

The panel's vision for 2030 painted a picture of work fundamentally transformed:

• Hyper-personalization: Every interaction, product, and service tailored to the individual
• AI agent teams: Employees working alongside AI agents that handle routine coordination, freeing humans for higher-value work
• Zero friction: Seamless experiences where AI anticipates needs and executes tasks without conscious effort
• Trusted systems: AI that customers and employees can rely on for critical decisions

"I think we don't need to have these frequent meetings because our AI agents can meet with our colleague AI agents to have this information sharing and exchange, which is going to free ourselves to do much better things," Asiri predicted.

Baxter offered a sobering counterpoint: "The winners and losers will be determined a lot faster now. The cycle time for companies to learn and adapt will accelerate, and those on the wrong side of the equation will be exposed a lot more rapidly."

The message from these leaders was clear: AI isn't so much about technology as it's about transformation. Success requires clear problem definition, solid data foundations, cultural change management, and unwavering focus on measurable business outcomes.

As organizations race to implement AI, the ones that will win aren't necessarily those with the most advanced technology. They'll be the ones who ask the right questions, solve real problems, and bring their entire organization along for the journey.

Want to learn more about building the data foundation your AI initiatives need? Connect with Incorta today for a 1:1 demo.