What it calculates
Gross capacity, realised capacity, first-year net value, ROI and simple payback from the assumptions you enter. Hours use 1,950 annual hours per employee.
Free scenario tool
Explore an AI efficiency scenario before building a business case
Adjust team size, salary, efficiency, realisation and your own cost assumptions to explore first-year net value, ROI and payback. The result is a transparent scenario for discussion, not a promise of savings.
- Transparent formula
- User-supplied cost assumptions
- No guaranteed savings or ROI
What it can indicate
How sensitive an illustrative business case is to efficiency, adoption and cost assumptions before a workflow pilot supplies stronger evidence.
What it cannot establish
Whether the intervention caused the gain, whether capacity converts to cash, or the effects of risk, tax, downtime and work quality.
Value Discovery
Small Business AI ROI Calculator
Explore gross capacity, apply a realisation assumption and add your own costs. This transparent scenario is a starting hypothesis, not a forecast, saving, or guaranteed return.
50
1500+
£40,000
£30k£150k+
15%
5% (Conservative)50% (Aggressive)
Choose an assumption you can test against a named workflow and a measured baseline. The tool does not supply an industry benchmark.
50%
0%100%
Estimate how much theoretical capacity can become useful work after adoption, workflow friction and ramp-up.
Illustrative first-year scenario
Realised annual capacity before costs
£150,000
Gross capacity × realisation rate, less the cost assumptions you enter. This is still a scenario: it does not establish causation, cash conversion, risk or the quality of recovered work.
Gross capacity value
£300,000
Before realisation and costs
Illustrative first-year ROI
Add costs
Net value ÷ first-year cost
Illustrative hours realised
7,313
After applying the realisation rate
Illustrative FTE equivalent
3.8 FTE
Not a headcount or cash-saving forecast
Illustrative payback
Not available
Requires one-off cost and positive annual net value
Need advanced mathematical or property modelling? Explore Babbage Calculator
Interpretation guide
A capacity estimate is not a cash saving
Recovered time creates value only when a feasible AI intervention changes the workflow and the organisation can redirect that capacity productively.
Use several assumptions, including a deliberately conservative case. Then identify where the gain would arise, who would change their behaviour and which operational measure could verify it.
A complete business case should deduct implementation and ongoing costs, account for adoption and ramp-up, quantify material risks and distinguish cash savings from capacity, service quality or revenue effects.
Start with the decision, not the technology
Build a business case from workflow evidence
We can help map the process, establish a baseline, test a bounded intervention and distinguish a plausible operational benefit from an attractive spreadsheet result.