Though two-thirds (67%) of supply chain managers told research company Gartner for a new survey that their current digital investments are being allocated to AI, more than half (55%) said they are unclear on the return on investment the technology might yield.

The message from the survey: The jury’s still out on ROI but the evolution toward AI-enabled operations is causing use cases to proliferate faster than organizations can develop effective change management approaches to support these new uses, according to Gartner.

See also: AI has yet to reach full adoption across most GRC teams, report finds

“Organizations are getting better at executing change for individual initiatives,” said Lorraine Gavin, who is senior principal analyst in Gartner’s supply chain practice. “The bigger challenge today is deciding where to invest limited change management resources so that they support the business outcomes that matter most. AI is making that decision more important than ever.”

In a news release that went along with the survey results, Gartner noted that to yield ROI from investments in AI, chief supply chain officers, or CSCOs, must deploy “right-sized” change management strategies that connect change execution to AI strategies, supply chain strategies, and broader enterprise priorities—so that change resources are directed toward outcomes and not individual activities.

To produce the results for their latest survey, between November 2025 and February 2026, Gartner polled 394 supply chain professionals from organizations with annual revenue of at least $250 million to determine the real allocation of their digital investments.

And to measure supply chain AI use cases and clarify their current ROI, the business and technology insights company polled an additional 135 senior supply chain leaders from January through April 2026.

See also: AI in manufacturing won’t deliver until supplier ecosystems are connected

The Gartner research distinguishes between change methodologies and change strategy.

As AI initiatives continue to multiply, Gartner advised CSCOs to move beyond one-size-fits-all approaches and align change investments to the outcomes they are trying to achieve. Gartner predicted that by 2030, organizations which right-size their change management efforts in this way will achieve twice the ROI on AI initiatives compared with those that continue to rely on legacy methodologies.