ROI and AI Impact
Week eight. Meera is about to present the pilot to Harbourline's CEO, and the question will be blunt: was it worth the money? "The AI is very accurate" will not survive a finance team. Numbers they can check will.
The rule
Baseline first, measure the change, subtract every cost.
- Baseline first. Before switching anything on, measure how things work today. At Harbourline: 6,000 invoices a month at about 7 minutes each is 700 clerk-hours, and clerks recover about ₹1.5 lakh a month in overcharges. Without a baseline, any "improvement" is a guess.
- Measure the change in the customer's own units: hours, rupees, days. Typical sources of value are time saved, money recovered, costs avoided (such as late-payment fees) and risk reduced.
- Subtract every cost. Licence and cloud costs, clerk time spent reviewing flags, one-time setup, and the cost of AI mistakes. False flags waste clerk time; missed overcharges are money lost. Measure the misses with a regular spot-check of invoices the system cleared on its own.
The standard formula is simple:
ROI = (benefit − cost) ÷ cost
Compare like with like. If the pilot covers only the 10 busiest carriers, compare those carriers before and after, not the whole company. And look for anything else that changed at the same time, such as a renegotiated carrier contract, which could claim part of the credit.
Be honest about what saved hours mean. They are not cash unless the time goes to something else. Say what happened to it: at Harbourline, clerks now chase disputes that used to be dropped, and the company no longer needs to hire a sixth clerk.
The shortcut
Speak the finance team's units. Turn every effect into rupees per month, and name where each number came from.
Time
The 10 pilot carriers send 4,800 invoices a month. Checking them took 560 clerk-hours; now it takes 80. 480 hours × ₹500 an hour (a clerk's full cost, including overheads) = ₹2.4 lakh. Source: before-and-after time study.
The trap is a result that only counts the good side: freed hours reported as cash when nobody's work changed, or the time clerks spend on false flags quietly left out.
Drills
Answer fast — trust the rule.
Why measure the baseline before switching the system on?
A pilot's benefits total ₹20 lakh a year and its costs ₹8 lakh a year. What is the ROI?
The system flags many invoices that turn out to be correct. Where does this show up in the ROI?
A pilot freed 480 clerk-hours a month, but nobody's work changed and no hiring was avoided. How should that be reported?
Which statement would a finance team trust most?
Remember
- Baseline first, measure the change, subtract every cost.
- Shortcut: turn every effect into rupees per month, and name each number's source.
- Trap: counting freed hours as cash when nothing changed, or leaving out the cost of AI mistakes.