The era of AI experimentation is over. The new era of AI accountability has begun.
With the EU AI Act now in force, simply dabbling in AI is a significant business risk. For leaders across Europe, the question is no longer if AI will transform your industry, but whether your organization will survive its regulation.
The Act makes one thing brutally clear: AI can no longer be a scattered collection of pet projects buried in different business units. Compliance is enterprise wide. Governance is non-negotiable. Trust is your most valuable currency.
In this new reality, the strategic response isn't to hire a few more data scientists. It’s to establish a cross-functional AI Center of Excellence (CoE). Here’s why 2025 is the year to build it.
The EU AI Act: From theoretical risk to concrete liability
The world's first comprehensive AI law introduces a risk-based framework that directly impacts your bottom line:
Unacceptable Risk:
Banned. (Think of social scoring).
High-Risk:
Heavy regulation. (This is where most corporate value lies—in HR, finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure). This is your focus.
Limited Risk:
Basic transparency obligations.
For you, this means every AI application, from your recruitment screening tools to your predictive maintenance systems, must now be documented, audited, and proven to be safe, unbiased, and compliant. The liability for failure is severe.
5 Reasons your AI CoE is a strategic imperative, not a cost center
A CoE is not an IT committee. It is a strategic command center that aligns AI investment with business value and regulatory survival.
- From regulatory panic to proactive compliance: AI CoE transforms the Act from a threat into a manageable framework. It centralizes oversight by maintaining model registries, conducting mandatory impact assessments, and ensuring that every deployment, across any department, meets the standard. It turns a legal headache into a structured process.
- Manage risk, build trust, and protect value: AI risk now encompasses financial, legal, and reputational aspects. A single biased algorithm can trigger massive fines and obliterate brand trust. An AI CoE embeds ethical guardrails for bias detection, explainability, and human oversight directly into your development lifecycle, transforming trust from a buzzword into a defensible asset.
- Break the pilot prison: Most companies are stuck in "pilot purgatory." An AI CoE breaks this cycle by standardizing tools, platforms, and reusable components. It turns fragmented experiments into scalable, cost-effective solutions that deliver ROI across the organization.
- Concentrate on your scarce talent: You don't have enough AI talent. An AI CoE is the force multiplier, creating a hub for your best data resources, engineers, and legal and risk experts. It fosters cross-functional expertise and becomes the engine for upskilling the entire organization, ensuring AI is adopted responsibly at all levels.
- Align AI with business outcomes, not hype: An AI CoE ensures every euro invested in AI is tied to a strategic business KPI, whether it's margin improvement, customer lifetime value, or operational resilience. It stops IT-led projects and starts business-led transformation.
Turning regulatory obligation into market opportunity
The most forward-thinking leaders aren't just seeing the AI Act as a compliance exercise. They see it as a massive opportunity to build competitive moats.
Companies that can prove their AI is ethical, transparent, and compliant will win greater customer loyalty, partner more easily, and innovate faster within clear guardrails. Your ability to demonstrate responsible AI will become a key differentiator in your sales pitches and annual reports.
At Avertim, we help our clients build these strategic capabilities. We don't just advise on the Act; we help you design and operationalize the AI CoE that will not only protect your organization but also power its next phase of growth.
Your next move
The window for getting ahead of this is closing fast. The organizations that thrive will be those that moved early to embed governance into innovation.
I challenge you to answer one question: Do you have full visibility and control over every AI application currently in use or development in your company? If the answer isn't an immediate "yes," your strategy has a critical gap.
We can help map your high-risk use cases and outline the blueprint for your CoE.
Contact us to turn regulatory pressure into your greatest advantage.
Mulya van Roon
Mulya.vanroon@avertim.be
