Most offices now have a quiet AI habit that nobody quite owns. An employee pastes a draft into a chatbot the IT team never approved. Another adds a browser extension that summarises meetings. A third tries an AI agent that can read files and send follow-ups. The work gets done faster, but the company often has no clear record of which tool was used, what data went into it, or whether the result was ever checked.
That gap is the starting point for a new launch from Bengaluru. ProHance, an AI-led productivity orchestration platform, announced its AI Adoption Index on Thursday, October 29. The index is described as an AI realisation scorecard, a single view that helps business leaders check whether AI use is approved, applied to real work and turning into delivered value.
The timing matters because unmanaged AI use is drawing closer attention from security and risk teams. A 2026 industry study of data breaches, cited in the announcement, found that incidents involving shadow AI accounted for 43 percent of all breaches, up from 20 percent in 2025. Among organisations that reported an AI-related security incident, 92 percent lacked adequate AI access controls.
What the index actually measures
ProHance says the problem is not a lack of AI activity. Most large companies can already see that employees use AI tools, and often how much they use them. What leaders usually cannot see is whether that use was sanctioned, whether it reached real work, and what it actually produced.
The index is meant to bring three kinds of evidence together. Usage analytics show activity. Governance and security tools control approval and spending. A separate set of tools tracks output.
Shadow AI, explained in plain terms
Shadow AI means AI tools, browser extensions and agents used by employees without IT approval. The tool itself may be useful. The risk comes from what happens around it. An unapproved tool may store prompts, keep copies of documents, or send company material to a service whose terms nobody in the company has read. If something goes wrong, the security team may not know where to look first, because the tool was never on its list.
The challenge for managers is to keep that speed without losing sight of data, cost and compliance.
Map, measure, mitigate
ProHance breaks the index into three actions, and the names are deliberately plain.
- Map: See how AI is being used across teams, and place each team on a maturity model that runs from AI-Aware to AI-First.
- Measure: Find which teams are behind on adoption, and how much capacity is being freed for higher-value work.
- Mitigate: Detect shadow AI, send each unapproved tool through a review workflow, and keep a permanent audit trail.
Ankur Dhingra, chief executive of ProHance, said the company wants to help leaders assess the real impact of AI on the workforce, including how to reskill and reshape teams as AI becomes part of daily work. He said the index shows leaders who is using what, how deeply, at what cost, and where AI is running without approval, measured from the work itself, so they can decide where to act.
Why usage numbers alone are no longer enough
A year ago, a rising count of AI logins could pass as progress. It no longer does. A tool can be popular and still be the wrong tool for the job, or the right tool used on the wrong data. It can also be popular in one team and almost unused in the team next door, which leaves the company with uneven skills and uneven risk.
The index follows ProHance’s recent outcome measurement layer for Outsourcing Performance Management, which gives companies independent evidence of what outsourced and contingent teams deliver. Together, the two launches push in the same direction: less guesswork about people and AI, and more visibility into what actually changed.
For Indian companies, teams often adopt AI ahead of formal policy, while clients and regulators ask sharper questions about data handling and control. ProHance says it is trusted by more than 450,000 users across more than 55 countries, and that it was named a Star Performer in the Everest Group People Analytics Platforms PEAK Matrix for 2026.
Frequently asked questions
What is the ProHance AI Adoption Index?
It is an AI realisation scorecard launched on October 29, 2026. It helps enterprises measure AI usage and check whether that use is approved, applied to real work and delivering value.
What is shadow AI?
Shadow AI means AI tools, browser extensions and agents used by employees without IT approval. The risk is the lack of oversight over what data they touch and where that data goes.
What do the 43 percent and 92 percent figures refer to?
They come from a 2026 industry study cited in the announcement: shadow AI incidents accounted for 43 percent of breaches, up from 20 percent in 2025, and 92 percent of organisations reporting an AI-related incident lacked adequate controls.
How are Map, Measure and Mitigate different?
Map shows how teams use AI, from AI-Aware to AI-First. Measure finds adoption gaps and capacity freed for higher-value work. Mitigate detects shadow AI, routes tools through review and keeps an audit trail.
The index arrives as companies move from asking whether staff use AI to asking whether that use is safe, useful and worth the cost.
