AI That Earns Its Keep · Worksheet

Exercise 1: Find your drag

Focus on one area of your business. Inside it, find the three processes that cost you the most time, money or quality.

Step 1: pick the one area you'll focus on

Sales and marketingOperations and adminCustomer service and deliveryFinanceHR and peopleOther: ____________

#	The process	What it costs you (time / money / quality)	Where it fits (customer / ops / knowledge / decision)
1
2
3

Tip: think about the task you dread, the one that causes complaints, or the one you'd hire someone tomorrow to take off your plate.

AI That Earns Its Keep · Worksheet

Score each process 1 to 5 on the four questions. Add them up: a higher total (out of 20) means do it sooner. High is always good.

Impact = time, money or risk saved · Frequency = how often it happens · Feasibility = doable with the data you already have · Ease = simple to set up

Ask “why is this a drag?” five times. If the root is a missing process or messy data, fix that first.

The problem

Why? (1)

Why? (2)

Why? (3)

Why? (4)

Why? (5)

Root cause

AI That Earns Its Keep · Worksheet

Do this for your number one opportunity. Rough numbers are fine: scale matters, not precision.

A. Times it happens per year (per week ____ × 52)
B. Hours each time
C. Fully loaded hourly cost of whoever does it (£)
Annual cost of the drag = A × B × C	£
D. Share AI could realistically take off your plate (be conservative: 40 to 70%)	%
Annual opportunity = annual cost × D	£

Also add anything else it costs: errors and rework, lost sales from being slow, staff you can't redeploy.

AI could

so that my team

This week, one thing I'll start myself

This month, one thing I'll explore further

When ready, one thing I'd want expert help with

A back-of-envelope figure, not a promise. But it's exactly where a paid audit starts. If the number is big, it's worth doing properly.