Why AI adoption fails without IT-led workflow integration

At 77-year-old promotional products company Gold Bond Inc., CIO Matt Price knew generative AI adoption wouldn’t come from rolling out a chatbot. Employees needed AI embedded into the work they already hated doing: messy ERP intake, document processing, and call follow-ups.

Instead of pitching benchmarks, Price built a small group of “super-users” to surface Gold Bond–specific examples and train the rest of the org. They then wired Gemini and other models into high-friction workflows, backed by sandbox testing, guardrails, and human review for anything public-facing.

The payoff showed up as behavior change, not hype: Daily AI usage rose from 20% to 71%, and 43% of employees reported saving up to two hours a day. “I wanted to bring everybody on the journey,” Price told VentureBeat. “After we reset some expectations, people started leaning towards it. Our adoption has taken off.”

ERP streamlining, product visualizations

Gold Bond, Inc. — not ...