Top 10 Reasons CEOs Are Chasing Away Top Performing Talent
9 December 2024
Customer Movers and Shakers 2024 overview
23 January 2025
AI is no longer the new idea in the room.
The harder question for operational leaders is whether it is actually improving the way organisations plan, allocate resources, interpret data and make decisions.
When Douglas Jackson researched our Operational Support Report, we spoke with leaders across Resource Planning, Workforce Management, Data, Analytics and Insight about the pressures facing their functions, where they saw the greatest opportunity and what businesses needed to create meaningful change.
The technology has continued to evolve.
Many of their underlying conclusions have not.
AI Everywhere but Where Is the Operational Value?
The original report opened with a deliberate challenge to the AI hype.
Generative AI was appearing in almost every technology proposition, while operational leaders were being asked to invest against promises of efficiency, improved service and transformation.
The argument was never that AI lacked potential.
It was that technology only becomes transformational when it solves a real operational problem.
That distinction matters even more today.
For COOs and operational leaders, the useful questions are not:
Do we have an AI strategy?
or
Which AI platform should we buy?
They are:
What decision are we trying to improve?
What work are we trying to remove, augment or accelerate?
Is the underlying data reliable enough?
What does success look like operationally and commercially?
Do we have the leadership capability to turn the technology into measurable performance?
Resource Planning Is Becoming a Strategic Capability
One of the clearest themes in our research was the changing role of Resource and Workforce Planning.
Leaders described functions under pressure to do more with constrained budgets while managing technological change, hybrid working, increasing data volumes and changing customer expectations.
At the same time, planning was becoming more strategically important.
The strongest functions were moving beyond workforce schedules and capacity calculations towards a much broader role in:
- forecasting demand
- modelling scenarios
- improving resource deployment
- informing investment decisions
- supporting Field Operations
- connecting customer demand with workforce capacity
- improving productivity
- identifying operational risk
- supporting commercial decision-making
The message was clear:
Planning works best when it is connected to the operation, not sitting beside it.
The Opportunity Isn’t More Data. It Is Better Decisions.
Our research with Data, Analytics and Insight leaders revealed a similar tension.
Organisations have access to more information than ever.
That does not automatically create more insight.
Leaders identified outdated systems, constrained investment, competing priorities and skills shortages among the barriers to progress.
But one issue appeared repeatedly:
the ability to turn data into something the business can actually act upon.
Data and Insight functions create greatest value when they move beyond reporting what happened and start helping leaders answer:
- What is likely to happen next?
- Where should we intervene?
- Which opportunity matters most?
- What is driving this performance?
- Where are we carrying unnecessary cost?
- What does the customer behaviour tell us?
- How should resources be allocated differently?
That is the shift from reporting to decision intelligence.
What Our Leadership Network Told Us
The report included direct insight from senior leaders working across Planning, Workforce Management, Analytics and Insight.
Three themes repeatedly emerged.
1. Prioritisation is becoming as important as capability
With more data, more tools and more potential use cases, leaders increasingly face the challenge of choosing where to focus.
One Resource Planning leader described the challenge as identifying the right data and insight rather than trying to “boil the ocean”.
Another senior Insight leader described the problem simply:
too many opportunities, not enough people to deliver them.
The organisations that make progress are therefore not necessarily those with the most technology.
They are often the ones with the clearest priorities.
2. Automation should release human capability
Across the research, leaders saw significant potential in AI and automation to remove repetitive work.
But the aim was not automation for its own sake.
The bigger opportunity was to release analysts, planners and operational teams to spend more time on judgement, interpretation, problem solving and strategic work.
That changes the leadership requirement too.
Technical expertise remains important.
Increasingly, so do:
- commercial understanding
- communication
- influencing
- storytelling with data
- cross-functional leadership
- change capability
3. Technology without leadership will not create transformation
When we asked leaders what was required to create genuine change, the answer was rarely simply “better technology”.
They talked about:
vision
strategy
leadership
skills
culture
adaptability
stakeholder alignment
change management.
That remains one of the strongest findings in the report.
Operational transformation may be enabled by technology.
It is still delivered by people.
Customer Outcomes Still Matter
The relationship between operational efficiency and customer outcomes also deserves greater attention.
In our original report, the July 2024 UK Customer Satisfaction Index stood at 75.8.
By July 2026, the UKCSI had recovered to 78.3, one point higher than a year earlier, although improvement had slowed significantly compared with the previous six months.
That matters because organisations continue to face the same balancing act:
reduce cost, improve productivity, introduce automation — and still make the experience better for customers.
Technology that moves cost but creates additional customer effort is not necessarily operational improvement.
Nor is a more sophisticated planning model useful if the organisation cannot translate it into better resource decisions.
The strongest transformation connects:
efficiency + customer outcomes + employee capability + commercial performance.
What Has Changed Since the Report?
AI capability has advanced significantly.
Access has widened.
Tools are more capable.
AI is becoming embedded within software used across Planning, Workforce Management, Customer Operations, Analytics and business intelligence.
But the strategic challenge has also become clearer.
The differentiator is increasingly unlikely to be access to AI.
Most organisations will have that.
The differentiator will be whether the organisation has:
- good enough data
- clear operational use cases
- capable leadership
- effective governance
- people willing and able to adopt new ways of working
- a clear link between investment and measurable business outcomes
In other words:
AI capability is becoming easier to acquire. Operational capability is not.
The Leadership Signal
Our original report set out to cut through the AI hype.
The question has now moved on.
The challenge is no longer whether AI, automation and advanced analytics will influence operational performance.
They already are.
The more important leadership question is:
Can your organisation turn better technology, richer data and stronger analytical capability into better decisions?
That requires more than technology.
It requires the right leaders across Operational Performance, Workforce Planning, Data, Analytics, Insight and AI-enabled Transformation who can connect:
data → decision → action → measurable outcome.
That is increasingly where operational advantage is created.
Explore the Original Operational Support Report
Our Operational Support Report 2025 brings together original survey data, leadership perspectives, salary benchmarking and insight across:
- Resource & Workforce Planning
- Data & Customer Insight
- Analytics
- AI & Automation
- Operational Support
- leadership capability
- emerging skills and salary trends
Download the Operational Support Report →
Originally published in 2025. Market data and salary information in the report reflect the period in which the research was conducted.
Building Operational Performance & Decision Intelligence Capability?
Douglas Jackson works with COOs, senior leaders and investors appointing leaders across Operational Performance, Workforce Planning, Data, Analytics, Insight, AI and Transformation.
We help organisations identify the people capable of connecting data, technology and operational strategy with measurable business performance.
Talk to us about your next operational leadership appointment →
Related Content
Operational Support Recruitment and Executive Search
