Artificial Intelligence

How Building an AI Champions Network Can Help With Adoption

Incorporating artificial intelligence into workflows requires more than just technical training. It’s a cultural change as well.

Teta Alim

Teta Alim is the managing editor of HealthTech. Teta previously worked as a digital journalist in Washington, D.C.

It’s not a secret that more small to medium-sized businesses are using artificial intelligence to help with operations. From drafting marketing materials to supporting lean teams, SMBs are finding ways to incorporate AI for certain tasks.

However, when it comes to full integration across a business, there’s still room to grow. A recent Gallup poll reveals that frequent use of AI is steadily rising, particularly among employees in the technology, finance and higher education sectors.

Earlier this year, during Google Cloud Next in Las Vegas, CDW Field Solution Architect Jason Clishe discussed the importance of AI adoption not solely as a technical project but as a cultural one as well. When organizations have leaders and team members who are excited and involved in AI adoption, those projects tend to have lasting success.

OpenAI’s own training materials define the “AI Champion” role as “helping people use AI in ways that are practical, trusted and connected to real work.”

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Let the Right People Lead the Charge for AI Adoption

It’s not enough to activate a license for a generative AI service, send out a link to some on-demand training videos and expect employees to just start using the tools. Clishe noted that when organizations have leaders who show a personal interest and enthusiasm about using AI, that helps with everyone’s confidence in adoption as a deeper commitment.

“When those goals are defined from the top down, and users and staff feel like they have agency in helping to create and craft those goals, we’ve seen that lead to success,” he said.

Another mark of success for wider AI adoption is encouraging and offering incentives to the people who are most passionate about the new tools to be involved in the rollout.

“Your individual users, as they get excited and start using the product, they’ll build their own agents, and they’ll come up with their own use cases, and they’ll begin to share those,” Clishe said.

Businesses should extend the momentum by building an AI champions network to encourage the savviest users to continue with advanced training, get early access to features and provide more actionable feedback.

56%

The percentage of business leaders who say they are in pilot or full deployment for their highest-priority AI use case

Source: CDW.com, CDW Artificial Intelligence Research Report, April 2025

“This is not a one-time install. This is something that needs that feedback loop. You’re going to need to continue to iterate on it, really, for the duration of the lifecycle of the product,” Clishe said.

Sharing success stories across the business will encourage users to share their built agents internally.

“Users are going to struggle every time they prompt the tool or ask for a solution,” Clishe said. “They’re going to need to iterate on it, and they’re going to need a way to provide feedback. Be patient with them, but also encourage that culture of curiosity, because users can provide feedback when something isn’t going well.”

It may help to engage a strategic partner to support change management. CDW, for instance, has a number of adoption services to help businesses with their AI projects, such as hackathons; high-scale training; and smaller, white-glove training for champion users.

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