{"id":318321,"date":"2025-12-16T03:10:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T03:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/318321\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T03:10:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T03:10:15","slug":"deloittes-cto-companies-are-spending-93-on-tech-and-only-7-on-people-and-that-has-to-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/318321\/","title":{"rendered":"Deloitte’s CTO: companies are spending 93% on tech and only 7% on people and that has to change"},"content":{"rendered":"

In boardrooms around the globe, a specific anxiety is taking hold. It isn\u2019t just the fear of robots taking jobs; it is the paralyzing worry of \u201cbuyer\u2019s remorse\u201d in a market moving at breakneck speed. According to Bill Briggs, Deloitte\u2019s chief technology officer<\/a>, as we move from AI experimentation to impact\/value at scale, that fear is driving a lopsided investment strategy where companies are pouring 93% of their AI budget into technology and only 7% into the people expected to use it.<\/p>\n

Briggs highlighted this \u201c93-7\u201d split as something that really surprised him\u2014and a critical error. Organizations are obsessing over the \u201cingredients\u201d\u2014the models, chips, and software\u2014while ignoring the \u201crecipe,\u201d which includes the culture, workflow, and training required to make the technology work. Briggs compared this tech-heavy approach to \u201ctrying to get paella\u201d but ending up with \u201cjust cilantro.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fortune was talking to Briggs at Deloitte\u2019s New York City office, braving the holiday-shopping crowds at 30 Rockefeller Center, to discuss the firm\u2019s 17th annual Tech Trends report<\/a>, an initiative that Briggs has been a part of for nearly two decades. Back then, Briggs recalled, he was a senior manager, having been hired straight out of Notre Dame as part of a wide effort to bring a tech flair to what was then mostly a tax and audit firm. \u201cTech was a glint in the eye of what we might be doing more of in the future,\u201d he recalled. The Tech Trends report came about when he was consulting with companies that were setting up CTO organizations, and Deloitte didn\u2019t have one. \u201cSo I came back to our CEO, like, \u2018Hey, we need this, regardless of if I play the role or not.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Briggs, who is based near Kansas City but is often back and forth to New York and all around the country, said this 93-7 split really surprised him. \u201cI felt it in my travels, but I hadn\u2019t been able to quantify it,\u201d he said about this ratio. He likened it to every technology wave, when the easiest thing to do is apply the new tech to the way a company has always worked. \u201cThis incrementalism is a hard trap to get out of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Although Briggs did not comment on whether companies are spending too much or too little on AI, he did say that he\u2019s seeing too much \u201cinstitutional inertia\u201d winning the day as companies try to fit AI into preexisting workflows as if it is just another bolt-on, rather than reimagine their processes holistically. He recalled the famous quote from computer science legend Grace Hopper<\/a> that the most damaging phrase of all is \u201cWe\u2019ve always done it this way<\/a>.\u201d To succeed in this tech revolution, he argued, leaders will have to push through what\u2019s comfortable, and that 93-7 ratio shows far too much leaning on the same old ways, when this moment calls for something new.<\/p>\n

Briggs\u2019s comments aligned with a massive global survey from consulting firm Protiviti<\/a>, released the same week as his new Tech Trends report. In a briefing with journalists, Protiviti\u2019s Fran Maxwell<\/a>, who leads the HR consulting function globally, said simply that \u201cHR functions and organizations are going to have to redesign jobs. That\u2019s not necessarily a muscle that most functions have.\u201d And, unintentionally echoing both Briggs and Hopper, he added: \u201cYou can\u2019t solve today\u2019s talent problems with yesterday\u2019s talent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The consequence: loss of trust and rise of \u2018shadow AI\u2019<\/p>\n

To correct the 93-7 imbalance, Briggs suggested a radical shift in how companies view AI agents. As organizations move from \u201ccarbon-based\u201d to \u201csilicon-based\u201d employees (meaning a shift from humans to semiconductor chips, or robots), they must establish the equivalent of an HR process for agents, robots, and advanced AI, and complex questions about liability and performance management. This is going to be hard. He brought up the hypothetical of a human creating an agent, and that agent creating five more generations of agents. If wrongdoing occurs from the fifth generation, whose fault is that? \u201cWhat\u2019s a disciplinary action? You\u2019re gonna put your line robot\u2026in a timeout and force them to do 10 hours of mandatory compliance training?\u201d<\/p>\n

The consequences of ignoring the human side of the equation are already visible in the workforce. According to Deloitte\u2019s TrustID report<\/a>, released in the third quarter, despite increasing access to generative AI in the workplace, overall usage has actually decreased by 15%. Furthermore, a \u201cshadow AI\u201d problem is emerging: 43% of workers with access to gen AI admit to noncompliance, bypassing employer policies to use unapproved tools. This aligns with previous Fortune reporting<\/a> on the scourge of shadow AI, as surveys show that workers at up to 90% of companies are using AI tools while hiding that usage from their IT departments.<\/p>\n

Workers say these unauthorized tools are \u201ceasier to access\u201d and \u201cbetter and more accurate\u201d than the approved corporate solutions. This disconnect has led to a collapse in confidence, with corporate worker trust in gen AI declining by 38% between May and July 2025. The data supports this need for a human-centric approach. Workers who received hands-on AI training and workshops reported 144% higher trust in their employer\u2019s AI than those who did not.<\/p>\n

The fear of \u2018buyer\u2019s remorse\u2019<\/p>\n

For CEOs and boards, the reluctance to address the cultural shift stems from a deeper fear that today\u2019s investment will be obsolete by next week. Briggs noted that leaders are terrified of committing to a vendor only to face \u201cbuyer\u2019s remorse\u201d when a better model releases days later. \u201cCEOs and boards, they\u2019re scared because they don\u2019t want to commit at the wrong time,\u201d he said. It\u2019s easy for them to delay committing to an AI tool because there could be another release next week, or the week after that. <\/p>\n

Briggs likened this mentality to trying to time the stock market perfectly, but he argued that this hesitation is \u201calmost like a pre-snap penalty\u201d in sports. He insisted that the fastest path to progress is just getting started on a solution, regardless of how crowded the market is.<\/p>\n

The urgency to fix this ratio is compounded by the arrival of \u201cphysical AI,\u201d which moves beyond text generation to robotics and drones. Real-world applications are already proving the value of getting the integration right; for example, HPE saw 50% faster reporting from data to decision after deploying Zora AI.<\/p>\n

For Briggs, the message to the C-suite is clear: The technology is ready, but unless leaders shift their focus to the human and cultural transformation, they risk being left with expensive technology that no one trusts enough to use. As Briggs warned, \u201cNo matter how much traffic there is, the sooner you leave, the sooner you can get there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In boardrooms around the globe, a specific anxiety is taking hold. It isn\u2019t just the fear of robots…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,5628,10260,5981,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-318321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-consulting","tag-deloitte","tag-robots","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}