AI Tools Are Easy to Launch — Hard to Land

Buying AI is easy.

Procurement loves it.

Pilots get funded.

Demos' dazzle.

But landing AI — embedding it into the way work actually happens — that’s the hard part. And most teams never get there.

The launch is a moment. The landing is a system. It requires more than a working model. It demands change management, context-specific enablement, and clear ownership of outcomes. If the model runs but no one uses it, the project didn’t land — it just took off and crashed away from your notice.

This is the pattern: a tool is deployed in isolation, without redesigning the workflow it’s meant to support. Outputs are impressive, but irrelevant. No feedback loop. No incentive to change behaviour. So people quietly default to the old way of working.

At MadeWithData, we break this cycle. We design for use. That means integrating AI into frontline tools, surfacing insight where decisions happen, and aligning metrics to behaviour, not just performance.

Landing also requires governance — not as compliance, but as operational glue. Who owns the outcome? What does “good” look like? How do we know it’s working?

Launching AI is theatre. Landing it is transformation. And the real value only shows up when the system gets used — by the right people, in the right moments, for the right reasons.