While most organizations struggle to realize material gains from AI, some leaders are adopting a simpler approach grounded in operational discipline.
Eduard de Vries Sands, Chief Information Officer at Eversana, explains why leaders should secure small, consistent operational wins before attempting large-scale strategic transformations.
After building credibility, the focus shifts to embedding expert intuition directly into self-improving workflows and creating new customer value for revenue growth.
Despite massive investments, most organizations have yet to realize material benefits from AI. However, instead of a lack of tools, the problem is a gap between expectations and reality. Leaders want AI to deliver instant cost savings and productivity improvements without changing how work actually gets done. And when those outcomes fail to appear, they add more tools instead of redesigning the underlying workflows.
Unfortunately, that pattern can make goals unrealistic from the start. Teams layer point solutions on top of legacy processes, hoping the next model or feature will finally unlock value. Instead, the result is "AI sprawl," a chaotic digital ecosystem where redundant, tool-centric systems drive up costs without creating meaningful impact. Now, to cut through the hype, some leaders are choosing a simpler path forward.
Leading the charge is Eduard de Vries Sands, Chief Information Officer at Eversana, a pharmaceutical manufacturing company. As a 2025 ORBIE Global CIO Award Finalist with experience across Fortune 500 and healthcare enterprises, de Vries Sands has a proven track record of using technology, AI, and data to drive real business growth. Today, his mission is to create a shared strategy for the entire organization, uniting everyone from the boardroom to individual business units.
"If you can guarantee a 5 to 10% cost reduction every year while also growing revenue 30 to 50% in key areas by reimagining your workflow, you will win," says de Vries Sands. But powering these intelligent workflows requires a clear data strategy.
De Vries Sands proposes a three-stage maturity model: start with the “exhaust” data from your own processes, enrich it with data from other internal systems, and finally, bring in external information from data brokers.
Tool trap: Before attempting a "home run," De Vries Sands advises leaders to accumulate smaller wins, or "singles and doubles." Still, the conversation often drifts elsewhere. "We always talk about the next tool or the best LLM, but when you have many of something, it becomes a commodity," he says. "We're chasing the wrong thing. Who cares if the newest tool is 5% better? Applying and adopting the tool creates value, not the darn technology.”
Ultimately, leaders must earn the right to be strategic by consistently delivering foundational improvements, says de Vries Sands. Over time, these small wins compound to create a durable competitive advantage. Meanwhile, your competitors are already falling behind. "They haven't done the table stakes," he adds, "and they probably won't reimagine the workflows because it's hard."
No ticket, no ride: For a technology leader, this commitment to operational excellence is the source of their social capital, de Vries Sands explains. Without it, a CIO has no credibility to pursue more ambitious projects. “As a CIO, if the basic systems don't work, you don't have the right to do anything else," he says. "You can't be strategic at the board table." For him, the reason is simple. "If a director reports spending $200,000 on overtime because the systems were down, my whole credibility is gone.”
Foundational gains are crucial, de Vries Sands maintains. But the real wins come from growing the business. Here, he poses a provocative question: "How could I create so much value for you that you gladly pay 20% more?" His answer lies in a "fun bucket" approach focused on co-creating value with customers.
Bottled genius: The approach begins with a deep analysis of what customers truly value. “My experienced people work intuitively, but if you ask them why, they don't really know," de Vries Sands says. "The goal is to integrate that intuition into the system so it can direct any employee to the patient they should focus on."
Flywheel effect: With each interaction, the system learns and improves its performance. "Every time we do this, the system learns from the outcome, and the recommendation improves over time. That’s the whole game.”
To illustrate the business impact, de Vries Sands tells two very different stories. In one, he explains how a telecom company lost his $600-per-month account due to a rigid, unintelligent process. "They assumed I wouldn't leave because I had phones to pay off," he recalls. "They clearly didn't know me as a customer, so I moved my account." But his criticism is aimed at the process, not the agent. "A smarter employer would empower their employees and put safeguards in place," he says.
In contrast, de Vries Sands describes how an unforgettable experience at a Ritz-Carlton created immense loyalty and drove top-line growth. "The next time I went there, I took a team of six or seven people," he concludes. "My thinking was, 'I'm going to stay there. I don't want to deal with all the other stuff.'"
