Effective stakeholder management: The key to advancing your GenAI POC and realizing its benefits

Regardless of where you are in your GenAI journey, one question remains: “How do I quickly move from concept to solution?” Successfully transitioning from a proof of concept (POC) to full-scale implementation is crucial to unlocking the benefits you have identified. Yet, many organizations struggle to bridge this gap to create value from POCs[i].

According to Deloitte’s "State of Generative AI in the Enterprise" report (January 2025), over two-thirds of surveyed executives expect 30% or fewer of their GenAI experiments to reach full scale within six months. While technology plays a significant role in development, the real challenge lies in effective stakeholder management. Like any other project, a GenAI project — from POC to production — is most effective when key stakeholders are identified, informed and engaged. It takes a team to achieve project objectives, so to overlook effective stakeholder management will create unnecessary obstacles.

Stakeholder management is a continuous process. There are three critical areas that can ensure a smooth transition from POC validation to a meaningful solution implementation: stakeholder identification, aligning on the vision with key stakeholders and knowledge transfer and transition to key stakeholders. We’ll review each one further.

Identifying the right stakeholders 

The resources and processes required for a successful POC often differ from those required to build a new standalone solution or enhance an existing solution[ii]. It is essential to identify and involve key stakeholders for each phase – from the very beginning. Assume your concept will be successful and plan ahead.

POC resources may be dedicated to the GenAI program, including strategic, technical and business SMEs for specific use cases. Production solution resources should involve business owners and SMEs who oversee existing processes and will benefit from the new capability. They typically have more control than POC SMEs. If the concepting team includes the same resources needed for production, the transition will be smoother.

Critical business, product and technical resources required for any post-POC activities should be aware of the objectives and the ultimate desired outcome. By engaging the production resources, the transition to production implementation becomes more likely to be effective. You should also include stakeholders that drive processes, like initiating the implementation project, assigning resources to do the work and providing necessary data and validation.  Their early buy-in and involvement along the journey can minimize resistance, accelerate implementation and foster advocacy for the solution.

Aligning stakeholders on the vision

Stakeholder alignment on the ultimate desired outcome is crucial — especially if they are facing constraints that could impact that outcome.  Without it, differing expectations can lead to misalignment, scope creep and stalled progress.

Consider that your POC proves that a GenAI-powered tool can improve accuracy and productivity. Should the solution be standalone, providing an immediate boost to efficiency? Or should you integrate it into an existing system to enhance long-term usability? Organizational constraints —such as budget, timelines or compliance requirements — may impact the solution’s feasibility. By aligning on the ultimate vision at the beginning of the process, you ensure all stakeholders are on the same page, creating a smoother path to production deployment and solution implementation.

Ensuring seamless knowledge transfer and transition

Once the implementation project has been initiated and the needed resources are assigned, knowledge transfer from the POC team and SMEs to this team is critical. When the POC team can stay engaged to contribute to the production solution prior as part of a well-structured hand off, the actual implementation is more straightforward, seamless and fast. Keep POC SMEs involved during the initial implementation phase to provide insights and technical support. You should also document key learning, workflows and AI model considerations to avoid redundant efforts. If a full-scale solution is not immediately feasible, you could consider a phased rollout — starting with a streamlined, standalone or simple tool that delivers quick wins in a shorter timeframe with less resources. This allows time for skills transfer and knowledge sharing across the organization while also generating excitement for solution adoption and support for further GenAI efforts. 

In our own experience implementing GenAI for government payments fraud detection, we ensured a seamless transition by including the key owners and SMEs for the business area and solution from the start. This approach led to a simpler standalone solution in production, making our transition to production implementation more effective and faster. We were able to reduce our time to implementation, meet our go-live date commitment (with successful results) and deliver immediate value to the business team and our clients. Future enhancements and integrations will now be informed by real-world usage and feedback.

Maximizing impact beyond implementation

Successful GenAI implementation is not just about internal deployment — it’s also about external positioning. While implementation often brings new functionality and capabilities to the services and/or solutions that your organization provides, marketing and sales efforts should run in parallel to drive adoption and business impact. This would include:

• Training internal teams and external clients on the new capabilities
• Engaging in targeted outreach to showcase how the solution adds value
• Reflecting AI-driven enhancements in marketing and sales collateral (for B2B and B2C organizations)

Engaging the resources needed for these activities will not only accelerate benefits realization but also position your GenAI initiative as a strategic differentiator within your organization.

With proactive stakeholder management, clear vision alignment and a thoughtful approach to solution implementation; you can move beyond POCs to fully realized GenAI solutions. By planning for success from the outset, you can minimize implementation challenges, realize the benefits of your concept quickly and progress your enterprise GenAI journey for more meaningful wins.

Learn more about how to successfully navigate the myths, risks and opportunities around GenAI by visiting our Artificial Intelligence page. 

[i] For clarity, we describe a POC as an effort that has a limited but clearly defined business problem (use case) that can potentially be solved by using GenAI technology. An example might be automating a manual and slow process that identifies and extracts key information from a specific type of unstructured document (e.g., contracts or correspondence) to improve productivity and quality. This work is performed in a limited and contained environment. If successful, the POC may transition to a production solution that would include building or enhancing a solution to leverage the GenAI technology within the current process and/or system.

[ii] In this blog, we have assumed that you have assessed and validated the POC results are successful and want to progress further. This validation and assessment topic is covered more broadly in Part C of our whitepaper Unlocking success with GenAI: A comprehensive guide.