Almost every business now uses AI. Only 18% are making money from it.
Why It Matters
If your AI subscriptions feel busier than your bank account, new research says you have plenty of company — and it shows exactly what the profitable minority does differently.
HCLTech, one of the world’s largest technology companies, released a global study this month, conducted with Raconteur across 500 enterprise decision-makers. The findings: 90% of organizations say AI is transforming their workflows, and 90% report productivity gains. Only 18% say AI is producing significant revenue.
Read those numbers together and the story sharpens. Nearly everyone has adopted the tools. Nearly everyone feels faster. Very few are making more money. And the report measured what separates the profitable minority — none of it involves owning more software. The 18% define a measurable use case before they buy (73% of them do, versus 22% of everyone else), and they rebuild whole workflows around AI rather than sprinkling it on top of old ones. As HCLTech’s Pawan Vadapalli put it, the winners “are not just running more pilots; they are rethinking how the business works.”
Who Should Pay Attention
Any owner paying for AI subscriptions that have no number attached to them — no response time, no booking rate, no hours-saved count. That’s most of us, and today’s move is for you. If you can already name the one AI workflow in your business and the number it moves, you’re in the 18%: skip today’s move and enjoy your coffee.
The Owner’s Forecast
The divide widens from here. Over the next year, expect the tool-collector pattern to get expensive as subscription stacks grow faster than results, while owners who rebuild one workflow at a time pull further ahead — and become very hard to catch.
The report also says something it didn’t mean to say. The winning ingredients it names — leadership sponsorship, cultural change, coordinated shifts across the organization — cost an enterprise a year of committees. In an owner-run business, the leadership sponsor is you, and the committee meets whenever you decide something. Small business enters the AI era holding the exact advantage big business is trying to manufacture.
One caution on the data: this study surveyed enterprises, and nobody has measured Main Street with the same rigor. Our read is that the pattern holds for small business, and likely sharper in both directions. The facts above are sourced; this forecast is ours.
Your Next Move
Stop collecting and pick one workflow — the one closest to revenue. For most owner-run businesses, that’s lead follow-up: what happens in the minutes and days after someone asks about working with you. Define the single number it should move (time to first reply is the classic). Rebuild that one workflow end to end with AI — the instant reply, the booking link, the three-day nurture — and read the number after 30 days. One workflow, one number, one month.
The tool that makes this practical: if follow-up is the workflow you pick, an all-in-one platform beats a pile of connected apps, because the pages, forms, emails, and automation live in one place and can’t fall out of sync. Kartra is the one I’ve run my own business on for years — the follow-up sequences answering inquiries at my company have run on it since long before AI made them smarter.
Best for: owners rebuilding follow-up or launching offers, who want pages, email, checkout, and automation in one login.
Not for: anyone happy with their current email platform who needs nothing else — a full platform is overkill for a newsletter alone.
Cost reality: real money every month. Judge it against the total of the tools it replaces, and use the trial to run that math cheaply.
Primary advantage: everything is connected out of the box, so the automation actually fires.
Meaningful limitation: a genuine learning curve in week one — the depth that makes it powerful also makes it busy.
Almanac verdict: if the 30-day follow-up rebuild is your move, run it here. Start on the trial; keep it only if your number moves.
Prefer not to add a platform? The manual version works and costs nothing: an auto-reply rule in your existing email, a calendar link, and three saved reply templates. Slower to run — and an honest place to start.
One more honest split: if your follow-up problem lives on the phone — missed calls, after-hours inquiries, people who never reach a human — that’s a different rebuild with a different best tool. Tomorrow’s forecast covers it, alongside some sobering new numbers on what paid ads now cost.
Almanac note: the Kartra link may earn us a commission at no additional cost to you. It never changes our verdict, and the recommendation always comes first.
Owners Are Asking
Why do most businesses fail to make money with AI?
Adoption without a measurable use case. Most companies sprinkle AI tools onto old workflows and measure nothing; the profitable 18% define one number, rebuild one workflow end to end, and read the result.
What’s the best first AI workflow for a small business to rebuild?
Lead follow-up — the instant reply, the booking link, the short nurture sequence. It sits closest to revenue and shows a readable result inside 30 days.
Do I need more AI tools to get better results?
Usually fewer. Consolidating around one workflow beats collecting subscriptions — the research found no connection between owning more tools and making more money.
Sources: HCLTech, “The Blueprint for AI Leadership” (July 2026) · UK Tech News coverage
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