◇ Interlude · on clarity
Before you build, you have to see clearly. The audit isn't about ambition — it's about which problems are actually worth your team's next six weeks.
NIGHT SKY · LA PALMA
E. FUSIKI / PEXELS
E. FUSIKI / PEXELS
01Pillar 01 · Find it
Find the AI use cases
that actually move
the needle.
Most SMBs lose six to twelve months — and somewhere between $50K and $300K — picking the wrong AI project first. We start with your numbers, your constraints, and your team to identify the two or three use cases worth doing now.
— A note from the founder
"The hardest part of AI for an SMB isn't building it. It's choosing what to build first. Get that wrong and the second project never happens."
Hashi S. · Founder, Digiform
2 wks
Audit duration
8–12
Use cases evaluated
2–3
Recommended for build
$0
If no fit found
§ 01 · Method
Three steps. Two weeks.
One defensible short-list.
Step 01 · Days 1–4
Map the operation.
We sit with your operations leader, walk the back office, and document where time and money actually go. Where the friction is loudest, AI lives best.
Step 02 · Days 5–9
Score every use case.
Each candidate scored on five dimensions: hours saved, dollar impact, technical feasibility, change-management cost, and time to first value. The numbers come from your data, not a vendor deck.
Step 03 · Days 10–14
Recommend two or three.
A 12-page memo with the two or three highest-conviction projects, ROI, payback, sequencing, and a decision: build now, build next quarter, or skip entirely. You leave with a plan, not an upsell.
§ 02 · Use case library
The eight places
SMB AI actually pays back.
Back office · 01
Invoice processing & AP automation
OCR + intelligent matching against POs and goods receipts. Touchless processing for the 80% of invoices that don't need a human.
Avg. payback2–4 mo
Back office · 02
PO & 3-way match reconciliation
Automated matching of POs, invoices, and goods received. Exception-only review, 90%+ touchless rate at maturity.
Avg. payback3–5 mo
Back office · 03
Document intake & classification
Onboarding forms, claims, contracts, intake docs — extracted, classified, and routed without manual triage.
Avg. payback3–6 mo
Customer-facing · 04
Inbound voice agent
Answer every inbound call 24/7. Qualify, schedule, route, or hand off — with human-quality voice and warm transfer.
Avg. payback1–3 mo
Customer-facing · 05
Outbound status calls & reminders
Order updates, appointment reminders, payment follow-ups — voice or SMS. Replaces 60–80% of routine outbound work.
Avg. payback2–4 mo
Customer-facing · 06
Web & chat lead qualification
Qualify, route, and book leads from your site or social channels. Full transcript and CRM handoff to your sales team.
Avg. payback2–5 mo
Workforce · 07
Knowledge work enablement
Anthropic Teams or Enterprise rollout, role-based prompts, internal knowledge connectors. 8–15% productivity lift across white-collar functions.
Avg. payback4–8 mo
Workforce · 08
Internal ops copilots
Custom agents on your CRM, ERP, or ticketing system. The 20% of repetitive work that swallows your best people's calendars.
Avg. payback5–9 mo
— Don't see yours?
Most use cases reduce to one of these eight.
If your situation doesn't fit cleanly, the audit is where we figure that out. The point is to find the version of the work that pays back, not the version that sounds impressive.
Talk to usBook a call →
§ 03 · The deliverable
The Operations
Audit Memo.
Twelve pages. Two weeks. Every recommendation backed by your numbers, with sensitivity ranges and a payback curve. The same document we'd produce for a Fortune 500 client — minus the Big-4 invoice.
Operations Audit · Confidential
Mid-market manufacturer · NJ
Q2 · 2026
Use cases evaluated · ranked
AP invoice automation11K invoices/yr · 2 FTE
$184K/yr
Build now
Inbound voice (after-hours)39% missed calls
$94K/yr
Build now
PO 3-way matchVendor reconciliation
$72K/yr
Build Q3
Outbound status callsOrder delivery updates
$48K/yr
Build Q3
Knowledge ops copilotCRM-integrated
$31K/yr
Skip · low fit
Sales lead qualificationInbound web chat
$22K/yr
Skip · low volume
Year-1 conviction total$278,000 / yr
§ 04 · How we score
Five dimensions.
One defensible ranking.
Every use case in your audit is scored against the same five dimensions. The model is open — we walk you through the math, the assumptions, and the sensitivity ranges. No black box.
Dollar impact
Annual savings or revenue lift, calculated from your actual P&L and operations data. Not a vendor benchmark, not a category average.
Hours unlocked
FTE hours redirected from rote work to higher-value work. Distinguished from headcount reduction — most SMB AI ROI comes from capacity, not layoffs.
Technical feasibility
Does the use case rely on stable inputs, integrate cleanly with your stack, and have a clear failure mode? Production-grade AI lives or dies here.
Change-management cost
How many people need to change how they work? The deployments that fail almost always fail on adoption, not technology.
Time to first value
Weeks until measurable impact. Anything over six months in an SMB context is a red flag — momentum is the asset.
§ 05 · DIY first
Or just run
the numbers yourself.
Before you book the audit, see what AI is worth to your business in eight inputs. The same model we use, public, free, no email required.
Open the ROI Calculator →Year-1 estimated savings
$284K
Range (P25–P75)$214K – $352K
Payback period3.8 months
3-year cumulative$1.18M
EBITDA contribution+8.4%
Common questions.
Same rigour, one tenth the price tag, and a 14-day turnaround instead of a 14-week one. We don't sell you an 80-page slide deck and a follow-on engagement — you get a 12-page memo, an open ROI model, and a decision. We're built for SMBs that can't afford a $300K Chief AI Officer, not for boards that want a brand on the cover page.
Find it · Build it · Govern it