Quick Wins for 2026: Making AI Deliver Real Impact for Digital Teams
In 2026, most organisations had already started their Artificial Intelligence (AI) journey. Ideas workshopped. Proofs of concept had been built. Tools had been trialled. Projects developed.
What many teams are now asking is a more practical question: What AI tools or improvements can deliver the value they promised?
For digital teams running Sitecore and Sitefinity, the strongest AI results we’re seeing aren’t coming from large, disruptive initiatives. They’re coming from focused, pragmatic decisions and from getting the fundamentals right.
This year, the opportunity isn’t to do more AI. It’s to find the right AI strategy for your business.
Looking to understand the quick wins in your digital ecosystem? PING offers digital health check by our consultants to identify where your organisation can optimise key areas of performance.
AI Impact Comes from Prioritisation, Not Experimentation
AI has matured quickly, but that doesn’t mean every use case deserves equal attention. In practice, the fastest wins tend to fall into three categories:
- 1. Activating AI capabilities already built into your digital platform and tools
- 2. Applying AI selectively to well-defined problems and processes
- 3. Ensuring your infrastructure can support AI reliably and cost-effectively
These are the areas where digital teams can move quickly in 2026 and see results without overcomplicating their stack.
Sitecore’s AI capabilities: The Fastest Place to Start
One of the most overlooked AI opportunities in 2026 is also one of the simplest: using more of what your platform already provides. Sitecore’s AI capabilities are designed to support everyday digital operations, including:
- Content creation and optimisation
- Personalisation and experience relevance
- Search and content discovery
- Insight-driven decision making for marketing teams
For organisations already running Sitecore, enabling and optimising built-in AI often represents one of the lowest-effort, highest-impact AI initiatives available and a logical first step before investing elsewhere. Yet many organisations haven’t fully enabled or operationalised these features. Teams aren’t sure how to translate them into day-to-day workflows.
When Sitecore launched Sitecore AI at its 2025 Symposium, the message was clear: AI is no longer an add-on, but a core part of how digital experiences are planned, created and optimised.
Sitefinity + RAG: Targeted AI That Solves Real Problems with your data
While platform AI provides quick wins, some of the most valuable AI outcomes come from applying it to very specific challenges. This is where Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) comes into play.
RAG allows AI models to retrieve information from trusted, governed content sources before generating responses. Instead of relying solely on a model’s training data, answers are grounded in your organisation’s actual content.
If you’re exploring this approach, we’ve outlined what RAG can (and can’t) do in more detail here.
For Sitefinity teams, this opens practical, controlled use cases such as:
- Internal knowledge discovery across large content libraries
- Customer support and service experiences powered by approved information
- Faster access to accurate answers without retraining models
- Greater confidence in AI outputs through content governance
The key is focus. RAG delivers value when it’s applied to the right problems, not when it’s implemented everywhere.
Azure Optimisation: The Non-Negotiable Foundation
Regardless of how advanced your AI ambitions are, one factor consistently determines success or failure: your infrastructure.
AI workloads are resource-intensive. If your Azure or cloud environment isn’t optimised, AI initiatives often:
- Cost more than expected
- Perform inconsistently under load
- Expose gaps in scalability, security or governance
- Amplify existing performance issues
This is why platform optimisation is one of the most reliable quick wins for 2026 even for organisations still planning their AI roadmap.
Performance tuning, cost optimisation and scalability improvements deliver immediate benefits on their own, while also ensuring AI initiatives can scale sustainably when the time comes.
In short: AI won’t fix weak foundations - it will magnify them.
What Will Work in 2026
Across Sitecore and Sitefinity environments, the strongest results will come from the following actions:
- AI capabilities built into your platform are enabled and embedded into everyday workflows
- RAG is applied selectively to high-value use cases
- Azure and cloud hosting is optimised before AI workloads scale
These organisations aren’t chasing trends. They’re making deliberate, practical choices and seeing measurable outcomes as a result.
Turning AI Into Real Business Value
2026 is the year AI shifts from promise to performance. For digital teams, success isn’t about adopting every new capability - it’s about prioritising the initiatives that deliver impact quickly and sustainably.
By focusing on platform AI, targeted RAG and strong Azure foundations, organisations can turn AI from an experiment into a dependable part of their digital ecosystem.
If you’re reassessing your AI priorities this year, starting with these fundamentals is often the smartest move.
