Agital turned ad hoc AI usage into enterprise transformation

The Challenge

Tools without transformation. By early 2025, Agital had ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini deployed, but they were going unused. Executives were aware of AI and wanted to transform, yet there was no formal owner for AI transformation, no validated baseline on proficiency or actual usage, and no accountability structure for adoption.

Usage was entirely ad hoc. It was siloed within teams, untracked at the organizational level, and varied widely in depth and sophistication. The company had done kickoffs and pep rallies. They had signed an OpenAI Enterprise agreement. But sustained, measurable adoption hadn't followed.

Compounding the problem, no single person had AI transformation in their formal remit. Without dedicated ownership, activation stalled. Enthusiasm without infrastructure equals expensive drift.

The Solution

Agital's CEO recommended Section as a strategic partner, specifically to help validate where they actually were on AI proficiency and to build a roadmap they could activate quickly. The partnership covers:

• AI Maturity Benchmarking to establish an honest, third-party-validated state of AI within Agital
• Transformation Planning: a full 2026 AI roadmap, presented to senior leadership and the board, focused on business outcomes
• Champions Program Design, including eligibility structure, governance model, goal-setting frameworks, and manager accountability architecture
• AI Enablement to drive baseline certification and build personalized AI skill development across all employee tiers
• Ongoing activation support as Section moves from a single engagement to a true transformation partnership

In early 2025, Section ran an AI Maturity Deep Dive across Agital's 350-person organization. It revealed wide variance in proficiency and almost no organizational visibility into actual usage patterns. Section and Agital co-developed a transformation plan for senior leadership and the board. Agital then formed an informal AI steering committee, signed a ChatGPT Enterprise agreement, and deployed Section Coach for baseline certification.

"Section was the perfect fit for us. We needed a strategic approach and help understanding where we were on AI – objectively and transparently - before we made the plan." - Matt Heffernan, CIO, Agital

From late 2025 into early 2026, Agital built a full 2026 AI roadmap with a crawl-walk-run structure, tightly aligned to business outcomes and PE return expectations. The champions program was designed with open eligibility, a manager endorsement requirement, and bottom-up goal ownership. A two-track governance model separated AI-powered product and technical development from org-wide enablement and adoption. A dedicated AI innovation hire leads the technical track, the champions program covers enablement, and a formalized steering committee coordinates the two.

The Results

In 2026, Agital re-engaged Section to move from transformation planning to roadmap activation. The champions program is launching across key teams and departments, with ambassadors defined by manager-approved use cases and active usage metrics. Manager accountability structures are being formalized so that AI adoption is a daily leadership behavior, not a periodic initiative. 

The Agital engagement offers four lessons:

• Start with a validated baseline, not assumptions. Assumptions about "where the org is" consistently overestimate adoption and miss the gaps that matter for program design.
• Solve the manager layer before you launch champions. Champions without accountable managers above them will plateau.
• Separate your AI tracks. Agital's two-track model, with coordinated governance, keeps technical development and org-wide enablement moving without collision.
• Activation is the step most companies skip. Re-engaging Section for activation reflects a realistic understanding of where AI programs actually break down.