Online Fireside Chat AI and the Evolving Workplace: Opportunities for People and Business Thursday 5th November, 12:00 pm NZDT
RegisterFree AI Business Case Builder
Turn your team's time on a piece of work into hours, FTE capacity and annual value, then see the potential return on an AI investment.
Three steps. No email or financial forecast needed, and you can leave unknowns blank.
What would you most like AI to help your business do?
No budget or financial forecast needed. Start with what you know.
From a Starting Point to a Business Case
An early estimate helps you decide where to look. A business case goes further: measure the work, test the change and agree how the benefit will be realised.
Creating 12 hours of capacity a week is equivalent to 0.3 of a 40-hour full-time role. At a $100,000 annual employment cost, that's $30,000 in annual capacity value. These are illustrative assumptions, not client results or a promise of lower payroll costs.
Decide what those hours would make possible. More client work needs evidence of demand and delivery margin. Lower costs need spending you can actually avoid. Better access to knowledge and data may improve quality or reduce delays without a simple cash saving.
Your people, processes, knowledge and data all shape what's possible. The free AI readiness assessment scores each of the four foundations and suggests a next step based on your business priority. It takes a few minutes and needs no email.
Assumptions You Can Check
Every figure in the builder is an estimate from these formulas. Change any input to test the result against your own numbers.
Weekly effort = people × hours per person. Scenarios apply 20%, 40% and 60% reductions, including review time. FTE = hours released ÷ full-time weekly hours. Annual capacity value = FTE × annual employment cost. Only work areas with both people and hours entered are included.
Capacity builds in six equal monthly steps, then stays constant. Net capacity value = the value over the selected period minus the initial investment and entered ongoing costs. Capacity ROI = net capacity value divided by those costs, as a percentage. It values utilisation rather than cash saved.
Unknown ongoing costs are excluded and flagged beside the ROI. Adding them reduces the return. Use your local currency consistently for all amounts. The model doesn't include a separate build delay, tax, inflation, financing or discounted cash flow.
Practical Questions
Start with the work, not a budget. Choose what you want to improve and estimate how many people do that work and the time they spend on it. Leave anything you don't know blank. This tool gives you a starting point to investigate, without requiring a financial forecast.
You can still continue. The tool won't invent a saving. You'll get a next step based on your priority, such as measuring a recurring task or listing the questions your team struggles to answer. We can help you investigate those opportunities.
No. They show what would change if the total time needed fell by those amounts. They aren't benchmarks or promises. The time reduction would need to include human checking and corrections. Test the work with your team to establish what is achievable.
FTE means full-time equivalent. With a 40-hour working week, 12 hours of capacity equals 0.3 FTE, not one whole role. You can change the full-time hours assumption. This measures capacity your people could use, not a recommendation to reduce staffing.
Multiply the FTE capacity by the annual cost of a full-time role. At an illustrative $100,000 employment cost, 0.3 FTE is worth $30,000 a year in staff capacity. The cost includes salary and employer costs and is editable. It isn't a salary benchmark, client result or cash saving.
Capacity ROI compares the estimated value of staff capacity over your selected period with the investment and any entered ongoing costs. It assumes that capacity is put to use. It isn't cash-flow ROI or a guaranteed saving. If ongoing costs are unknown, the result is explicitly shown before those costs. The $30,000 investment is an editable illustration, not a quote.
They can, while your team uses and maintains the changes. This scenario counts the initial investment once, any entered support costs each year and capacity building over six months before staying constant. Validate actual adoption, usefulness and future costs before committing.
No. Your result is available without an email. Entries stay in the tool and aren't submitted to us. Avoid confidential information. If you choose to contact us, you decide what to share. You can also print your result or save it as a PDF.
A Good Place to Start
Thirty minutes on how your business runs and what you'd like to improve. No preparation or project brief needed.
Book a Call hello@elab.co.nz