MEMO · TO anyone asked what the return would be · RE a planning estimate you can defend
Free tool · Financial
Five inputs, all yours. Nothing is hidden: the automation share and the running cost, the two assumptions a finance director challenges first, are sliders rather than constants, so the number you leave with is one you can show the working for. No email required, and nothing you enter leaves your browser.
How to use the number
Time freed only becomes value if the capacity is redeployed to work that matters, or if headcount genuinely changes. An estimate that assumes neither is a measure of theoretical slack, not of return. Decide which of the two you are actually claiming before you present it.
Seventy percent is a reasonable default for a genuinely repetitive, rules-shaped task. It is far too high for anything involving judgement, exceptions or a customer on the other end. Move that slider down and watch how quickly the case narrows: that sensitivity is more useful than the headline figure.
The most common reason an AI programme cannot prove its return is that nobody measured the before. Whatever number this produces, the next step is measuring the current state of that task properly, so the claim can be tested later rather than asserted.
Where this leads
AI Governance & Board Readiness produces a Return on Employee worksheet and a scored baseline for a use case your team brings in, which is the difference between an estimate and a case someone will fund.
Before you go
I insisted on the no-email condition, over some internal objection, because a lead-generation form dressed up as a diagnostic is a small dishonesty I did not want attached to a practice with my name on it. These tools score you honestly and tell you where the gap sits, whether or not you ever speak to us afterward. That is closer to how I think a genuine assessment should behave, in a classroom or a boardroom. If the result tells you your organisation is not ready, believe it before you believe anything a vendor tells you next.
