Our top 5 AI blogs and case studies of 2025

Here are the five pieces we are revisiting:

1. Understanding AI Costs: Tokens, Credits, and What They Mean for You
2. Choosing the Right Cloud LLM Provider: A Strategic Guide for Digital and Innovation Leaders
3. AI for Nonprofits, Part 1: Where AI Can Have Immediate Impact
4. Advanced Architectural Products: Scaling secure AI with quick wins
5. Boston Children’s Hospital: Case study

What decision makers can learn from these five pieces

AI moved fast in 2025. Many leadership teams felt the pressure. You need to innovate, but you also need to protect trust and reduce risk.

• You are under threat from digital change that is moving faster than your planning cycles.
• You do not have enough talent to experiment safely and scale responsibly.
• You are trying to protect customer trust while still shipping outcomes.

That tension shows up in the same places again and again. Costs spike unexpectedly. Provider choices create risk. Teams want to adopt AI, but they do not have enough time or skills to do it well.

The talent pressure is not a vague feeling. 44% of executives say a lack of in-house expertise is slowing AI adoption. Workforce disruption is also not slowing down, as highlighted in The Future of Jobs Report 2025.

These five Augusto pieces stand out because they help leaders make decisions, not just learn concepts. Together they point to a simple truth.

If you want AI to drive growth, you need a plan for cost, provider risk, enablement, and outcomes.

Assessment of the top 3 AI blogs

1) Understanding AI Costs: Tokens, Credits, and What They Mean for You

This blog makes AI costs understandable for non-technical decision makers. It explains tokens and credits, then connects them to real budgeting challenges.

What it really teaches: AI spend is variable. It behaves more like usage-based cloud bills than like a fixed software license.

Practical advice you can use this quarter:

• Match the model to the task. Do not use the most powerful model by default. Reserve it for high-stakes work where quality matters most.
• Set a “good enough” output standard. A lot of spend comes from generating long outputs that no one reads.
• Instrument early. Add basic usage logging and cost alerts before you roll AI out broadly.
• Design prompts for efficiency. Reduce unnecessary context and repetition. Shorter inputs and tighter outputs reduce cost.

Leadership takeaway: Treat AI cost like a product metric. Someone should own the question, “What outcome are we buying with these tokens?”

2) Choosing the Right Cloud LLM Provider: A Strategic Guide for Digital and Innovation Leaders

This blog reframes provider selection as a leadership decision. It gives a clear lens for evaluating providers when AI moves from experimentation to real workflows.

What it really teaches: Picking a provider sets the rules for safety, governance, and long-term flexibility.

Practical advice you can use this quarter:

• Classify data before you build. Decide what data is allowed in prompts, what must stay internal, and what requires additional safeguards.
• Make retention and training policies non-negotiable. If you cannot explain where data goes and how it is used, you are not ready to scale.
• Plan for architecture, not a demo. Many teams choose a provider based on a prototype. Later, they discover the provider does not fit compliance needs or integration reality.

If you want a concrete example of what enterprise-grade controls can look like, here is one: data sent to the OpenAI API is not used to train or improve models by default unless you opt in.

Leadership takeaway: Provider choice becomes expensive to change after you scale. Decide early and decide intentionally.

3) AI for Nonprofits, Part 1: Where AI Can Have Immediate Impact

Even though it is written for nonprofits, the playbook works anywhere. It focuses on where AI can help quickly without requiring massive budgets.

What it really teaches: The best first AI wins create capacity. They remove repetitive work so your best people can focus on higher-value decisions.

Practical advice you can use this quarter:

• Start with back-office workflows. Summaries, drafting, translation, and knowledge search are often low-risk and high-impact.
• Choose measurable work. Pick tasks where you can track time saved, cycle time reduced, or quality improved.
• Build trust with safe pilots. Early wins should reduce risk, not increase it.

Leadership takeaway: Your first goal is not AI transformation. Your first goal is capacity creation.

Assessment of the top 2 AI case studies

1) Advanced Architectural Products: Scaling secure AI with quick wins

This case study is a strong blueprint for growth teams that have valuable intellectual property. The focus is speed with control.

What it shows in practice:

• A secure AI foundation can be built quickly when you prioritize architecture and governance.
• Early wins can come from internal enablement, developer acceleration, and a well-managed knowledge layer.
• Momentum increases when teams see value fast and feel safe using the tools.

Why it matters for decision makers: If your advantage lives in proprietary methods, pricing, designs, or delivery know-how, data control becomes a growth strategy. The point is not to slow down. The point is to scale without creating a risk you later regret.

2) Boston Children’s Hospital: Case study

This case study highlights a different but equally important lesson. Digital modernization reduces operational strain. When you simplify the platform and remove friction, teams move faster and customers get better experiences.

What it shows in practice:

• Consolidation and clarity can unlock speed, even before you add new AI features.
• Automation is most helpful when it handles routine work, so people can focus on complex needs.
• Strong foundations make future AI adoption easier. You do not want to layer AI onto a fragmented system.

Why it matters for decision makers: AI is not a shortcut around messy systems. Clean architecture and clear journeys make AI more useful and safer.

The bigger picture: five patterns for AI adoption that scales

1) AI needs guardrails, not hype

Costs, privacy, and risk do not manage themselves. If leadership does not set boundaries, teams can accidentally create exposure.

A simple starting point is a one-page policy that answers:

• What data can be used in AI tools?
• What tools and providers are approved?
• Who owns monitoring and escalation?

2) Provider selection is the foundation of your program

Provider choice shapes what you can safely scale. If you decide late, you pay twice. You pay once to build and again to rebuild.

3) Quick wins make adoption real

Most organizations are still struggling to move from pilots to embedded value. Most organizations have not embedded AI deeply enough into workflows to realize enterprise-level benefits.

The case studies show a better path. Build a secure foundation, prove value quickly, then expand with intent.

4) Talent shortage is a strategy problem

When skills are limited, you need repeatable patterns. That includes training, enablement, and reusable building blocks.

Your goal is to make AI easier to adopt than to misuse.

5) The best AI programs keep humans in the loop

The goal is not to replace people. The goal is to support them with better tools, faster access to knowledge, and safer workflows.

A practical 60-day plan to build momentum with AI

Step 1: Pick two use cases that are safe and measurable

Good candidates are tasks like summarizing, drafting, internal knowledge search, and customer service triage.

Step 2: Build basic cost and risk controls

• Usage logging
• Cost alerts
• A short list of approved tools
• Clear data handling rules

Step 3: Pilot with a small group and document the playbook

The playbook should cover:

• When to use AI and when not to
• Prompt patterns that work
• Quality checks
• Escalation paths for sensitive issues

Final thought

The teams winning with AI are not chasing every new model. They are making a few high-quality decisions early and then scaling with discipline.

If you want AI to drive growth in 2026, start with the basics. Get costs under control. Choose providers intentionally. Create capacity with safe wins. Then expand into higher-stakes workflows once trust and governance are in place.