Return on Investment (ROI)
What an AI tool or workflow returns against what it costs, usually counted in time saved, cost reduced or revenue gained, and the time it takes to pay back. It can only be shown against a baseline taken before the tool arrived.
What it means in practice
The time-saving article warns that feeling faster and being faster are different things: time moves into checking, fixing, re-prompting and handoff, and a saving that people report but nobody timed is opinion. The running cost article makes the same point from the cost side: human review can cancel the saving if checking takes nearly as long as doing the work, and a rising bill is a sign of success only if the value rises with it.
How we use it
The well-scoped workflow article is the site’s case for narrow scope: the gains concentrate where a workflow is narrow, and broad rollouts are where the return goes missing. The time-saving article closes each review with one of four verdicts, keep, scale, switch or drop, and names an AI audit as one way to get the baseline a return is measured against.
FAQ
Questions about return on Investment (ROI)
How do I measure AI ROI for a Small Business?
Start with time. The time-saving article suggests recording how long one repeated task takes from start to accepted finish before the tool, then again with it, including every check, fix and handoff, and multiplying the difference by how often the task happens. If the saving holds at 30 days and quality has not fallen, the return can be defended.
How quickly does an AI Workflow pay for itself?
The well-scoped workflow article reports an analysis of 200 AI projects across French SMEs with a median return on investment of 159% and payback in an average of 6.7 months. It adds that a single, well-defined process pays back faster than a broad rollout.
What it means for a Business
The return concentrates where a workflow is narrow and well scoped. A defined, single-purpose workflow produces a number that can be measured; a broad, loosely defined rollout across an organisation usually does not, which is where the return goes missing.
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