Assumption Scenario
Your Team
Total employees (operations & admin)
50
Avg. fully-loaded employee cost ($/yr)
$75K
Manual/repetitive work per employee (hrs/wk)
10 hrs
Monthly process volume (transactions/docs)
5,000
Avg. cost per error or exception ($)
$250
Current error / exception rate (%)
5%
3-year net return
…
after all program costs
Year 1 net benefit
…
at 35% first-year capture
Payback period
…
months to break even
Hours freed / wk
…
across your team
…
hours freed annually
…
FTE of capacity freed
Year 1 net benefit breakdown (35% capture)
Process fixes before AI…
Assisted work (AI helps people work faster)…
Automated work (AI completes the step)…
Error & exception reduction…
Less: AI tools and usage costs…
Total Year 1 net benefit…
Dollars count only the freed time you actually put to use. The hours above show the full amount.
Program investment
Process Assessment…
CLEAR Roadmap…
AI Operations Retainer (12 mo)…
Implementation partners & change mgmt (scales with team size)…
Total investment…
Consulting fees only. Implementation grows with the size of your team. Expect another $100K to $200K on your side for staff time, technology, and data prep. The retainer is modeled at $10K a month for a year, and real scope depends on the engagement. Schedule a call to scope your engagement.
3-year cumulative benefit vs. total investment
Cumulative net benefit
Total investment
Breakeven: calculating…
Benefits ramp up over time: 35% of the full amount in Year 1, 70% in Year 2, 90% in Year 3. They are shown after ongoing AI tool and usage costs. Investment is shown as an upfront Year 1 cost.
CoreAssisted work: Brynjolfsson, Li & Raymond, "Generative AI at Work," Quarterly Journal of Economics (2025). A staggered rollout of an AI assistant to 5,179 customer support agents raised issues resolved per hour by 14% on average, with much larger gains for novice and lower-skilled workers. The conservative scenario uses 14% for assisted work.
SurveyCapacity realization: EY US AI Pulse Survey, fourth wave (fielded Sept–Oct 2025, published Dec 2025). Of 500 US senior decision-makers, 96% of AI investors report productivity gains and 57% call them significant, yet only 17% reduced headcount. Most reinvest the time, which is why this model counts only the share of freed capacity you put to use.
SurveyValue gap: BCG, "The Widening AI Value Gap" (Sept 2025), 1,250+ companies. 60% report no material value from AI despite substantial investment, while 5% achieve value at scale.
NoteAutomation reality: Gartner (June 2025) predicts over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027 due to rising costs, unclear business value, or weak risk controls. This model caps the automatable share of work, assumes humans still handle exceptions, and subtracts ongoing AI costs.
NotePlanning assumptions: Process-fix gains, the automatable share of work, AI completion rates, capacity realization, error reduction, and AI run costs are Optimus Insights planning assumptions, not published benchmarks. In a Process Assessment we replace them with your own process data.
Next step
Get the real numbers
for your business.
for your business.
The Process Assessment maps how your process actually runs, quantifies your specific opportunity, and gives you a prioritized plan in 2–4 weeks, starting at $20K. No pitch and no obligation.