AI adoption
AI business case calculator
Most AI business cases assume everyone uses the tool every day. Work out what yours is worth when a quarter of them do, what the whole thing costs, and the month it pays back.
Softblues is a London-based AI practice and Registered Anthropic Partner Network member. The calculator is free and open. Nothing you type leaves your browser, and it will sometimes tell you not to build.
The calculator
Payback, expected case: Month 10. Conservative: month 18. Upside: month 8.
Payback, expected case
Month 10
Cumulative cash benefit covers cumulative cash cost.
- Conservative
- Month 18
- Expected
- Month 10
- Upside
- Month 8
01The workflow today
Quotes, files, claims, invoices
Include review and exceptions
Include the new review step
Share of volume actually done the new way
Salary plus on costs, per worked hour
02How the hours become money
Somebody has to commit to one
Contribution, never revenue
03What it costs, all in
One time
One time. Usually underestimated
Only seats you would not otherwise buy
Credits, tokens, runtime
Economic, not cash. Kept out of the payback
Payback, expected case
Month 10
Cumulative cash benefit covers cumulative cash cost.
- Conservative
- Month 18
- Expected
- Month 10
- Upside
- Month 8
Cost against benefit, 24 months
Show the chart as a table
| Month | Cost | Conservative | Expected | Upside |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | £4,500 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| 2 | £9,000 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| 3 | £13,500 | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| 4 | £14,231 | £750 | £1,562 | £2,812 |
| 5 | £14,962 | £1,500 | £3,125 | £5,625 |
| 6 | £15,693 | £2,250 | £4,687 | £8,437 |
| 7 | £16,423 | £4,125 | £8,593 | £15,468 |
| 8 | £17,154 | £6,000 | £12,499 | £22,499 |
| 9 | £17,885 | £7,875 | £16,405 | £29,530 |
| 10 | £18,616 | £9,750 | £20,311 | £36,561 |
| 11 | £19,347 | £11,625 | £24,217 | £43,592 |
| 12 | £20,077 | £13,500 | £28,123 | £50,623 |
| 13 | £20,808 | £15,375 | £32,029 | £57,654 |
| 14 | £21,539 | £17,250 | £35,935 | £64,685 |
| 15 | £22,270 | £19,125 | £39,841 | £71,716 |
| 16 | £23,001 | £21,000 | £43,747 | £78,747 |
| 17 | £23,732 | £22,875 | £47,653 | £85,778 |
| 18 | £24,462 | £24,750 | £51,559 | £92,809 |
| 19 | £25,193 | £26,625 | £55,465 | £99,840 |
| 20 | £25,924 | £28,500 | £59,371 | £106,871 |
| 21 | £26,655 | £30,375 | £63,277 | £113,902 |
| 22 | £27,386 | £32,250 | £67,183 | £120,933 |
| 23 | £28,117 | £34,125 | £71,089 | £127,964 |
| 24 | £28,847 | £36,000 | £74,995 | £134,995 |
Capacity releasednot cash
- Minutes saved per item
- 43
- Items done the new way each month
- 204
- Hours released per month
- 146
- Value at loaded cost, per year
- £45,614excluded from the payback above
The investment
- One time cash
- £13,500
- Recurring cash per year
- £8,770
- Year one cash
- £22,270
- Year two onward
- £8,770
- Year one including internal time
- £25,910economic view
The figures loaded are the manufacturing example from Building the business case for AI adoption. They are illustrative assumptions, not a Softblues result and not any client's result.
A payback month that appears only in the upside column is not a payback. Build the case on the conservative one.
Nothing you type here leaves your browser.
How do you build a business case for AI?
Name the constraint you are trying to remove and the person who answers for it, then name the route the benefit travels. There are four: the same people serve more clients and that extra volume exists to be had, a planned hire is cancelled or deferred in writing, an outsourced service or licence or overtime line is switched off, or a costly event becomes less likely. Hours returned are capacity rather than money, and they stay capacity until one of those four is chosen and somebody commits to it. Measure the workflow before anyone touches the tool: volume, labour time including review and exceptions, rework rate and current spend. Price the whole twelve or twenty-four months rather than the licence line, so consumption, integration and data preparation, human review, training time and monthly support are all in it. Then apply the adoption denominator, which is the share of the intended population who genuinely use the thing weekly at the assumed quality. Measured weekly active use of licensed AI seats commonly runs at 20% to 30%, so a case built on everyone using it every day is wrong by roughly a factor of four. Finally, run conservative, expected and upside scenarios against cumulative cost month by month and read off the month they cross. If they never cross, write that down and say what would have to change.
How do released hours become money?
By one of four routes, and somebody has to commit to one of them in writing. If nobody will, the firm has a productivity story, and productivity stories do not survive a budget round.
| Route | What has to happen | What you count |
|---|---|---|
| Serve more | The same people handle more clients, matters, cases or files, and that extra volume exists to be had | Contribution on the additional volume, never gross revenue |
| Do not hire | A planned hire is cancelled or deferred, in writing | The loaded cost of the person not hired, from the month the hire would have started |
| Stop buying | An outsourced service, a licence, a contractor or an overtime line is switched off | The cash that leaves the accounts, from the month it stops |
| Avoid a loss | A fine, a rework cycle, a write-off, a missed deadline or a lost client becomes less likely | Expected value: the cost of the event multiplied by the change in its likelihood, stated as an estimate |
What belongs in the cost side?
State the period, usually twelve or twenty-four months, and price everything inside it. Only incremental cost belongs here. What the firm already pays for Microsoft 365 is sunk.
- Licences beyond existing commitment. Only the incremental seats.
- Consumption. Credits, tokens, API and agent runtime. Every vendor now has a metered line under the licence line, and it is the one that surprises the finance director.
- Implementation. Build, configuration, testing, the paid discovery if there is one.
- Integration and data preparation. Connectors, permissions clean-up, fixing the spreadsheets or the document store before anything can read them. Routinely underestimated.
- Training and change time. Internal hours, at loaded cost.
- Human review. The person who checks the output. An output somebody has to check is not free.
- Monitoring and support. Drift checks, model and prompt updates, the monthly review.
Internal time is a real economic cost and belongs in the case, marked as economic rather than cash so nobody presents it to the board as a saving that shows up in the bank. The calculator keeps it out of the payback and reports it on its own line.
What does the calculator do that a spreadsheet of hours does not?
Three things, and each one usually moves the answer. It discounts the benefit by the adoption rate you enter, because the people who produce the benefit are the same people who have to open the tool. It shows released hours apart from cash and leaves them out of the payback, so the same benefit cannot be counted twice. And it can return a no: set the route to "No route named yet" and the cash benefit goes to zero, because that is what happens in the accounts. A tool that cannot tell you to stop is marketing.
AI business case calculator: at a glance
- What it does
- Works out the payback month on one AI project, from your own baseline, at an adoption rate you choose.
- What it will not do
- Turn released hours into cash. Capacity is shown on its own and kept out of the payback until a route is named.
- The four routes
- Serve more, do not hire, stop buying, avoid a loss. There is no fifth.
- The adoption rule
- Multiply the modelled benefit by the share of people who genuinely use it weekly. Measured weekly active use of licensed AI seats commonly runs at 20% to 30%.
- Horizon
- 24 months, with three scenarios and the crossing point marked.
- Cost
- Free. No sign-up, no email, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
- Sources
- Vendor and regulator figures checked between 1 and 3 September 2026. Worked-example figures are illustrative assumptions.
- Based in
- London-based, working with mid-market firms.
The guide and the spreadsheet
The method above is written up as a guide, with two worked examples, a monthly scorecard and the same arithmetic as a spreadsheet you can keep. Both are in final review and are not released yet. The calculator above is the whole method in working order in the meantime.
Baseline one workflow with usCommon questions about the AI business case
How do you calculate ROI on AI?
Measure the workflow before anyone touches the tool, then work forward. Take volume per month, labour time per item including review and exceptions, the rework rate and the current spend. Model the after state on the same sample shape. Multiply the modelled benefit by the share of people who will genuinely use it weekly, price the whole twelve or twenty-four months including consumption, integration, review and support, and set cumulative benefit against cumulative cost month by month. The month they cross is the payback month. The return is what happens after it.
Why do most AI business cases fail?
On the denominator, not the price. The firm models every person using the tool every day at full effect, then watches one in four open it weekly. In March 2026 paid Copilot seats stood at roughly 15 million against about 450 million commercial Microsoft 365 seats, a 3.3% penetration rate, with weekly active use of licensed seats running at 20% to 30%. A case built on 100% adoption and the same case built on 25% differ by a factor of four, and only one of them is going to happen.
What does AI cost a mid-sized company?
The licence line is the part everyone remembers and the smallest part of the total. Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot is £24.60 per user per month, and reviewing 500 files a month on Claude Sonnet 5 through the Batch API costs about $22.50 in model spend. List prices as verified between 1 and 3 September 2026. What actually moves the number is everything under it: consumption, integration and data preparation, implementation, training time, the person who checks the output, and monitoring and support. Integration and data preparation is the line most often left at zero and most often wrong.
How long before AI pays for itself?
It depends on the ramp more than on the tool. A build that runs for three months with no benefit, reaches partial effect for another three and full effect from month seven will not cross its cumulative cost until somewhere in the second half of year one, even on numbers that look comfortable. Put your own figures in the calculator above and read off the month. If the lines never cross inside 24 months, that is a real answer, and it is cheaper to find it now.
What adoption rate should I assume?
The one your pilot measured. Where there is no pilot yet, state the assumption on the page so a reader can argue with it, and expect it to be lower than it feels. Measured weekly active use of licensed AI seats commonly runs at 20% to 30%. Applying no discount at all is the single most common error in this work. The calculator flags any figure of 95% or more for that reason.
Why are saved hours not a saving?
Hours returned to a team are capacity. Capacity becomes money by four routes and no others: the same people serve more clients and that extra volume exists to be had, a planned hire is cancelled or deferred in writing, an outsourced service or licence or overtime line is switched off, or a costly event becomes less likely. If the sponsor cannot name which of the four applies and commit to it, the firm has a productivity story rather than a business case. The calculator shows released hours and keeps them out of the payback for exactly that reason.
When is AI not worth it?
When the process is broken, undocumented or about to be replaced, fix that first and spend nothing. When the team is already fully booked on work with no queue behind it, there is no serve-more route, so released hours go nowhere unless a hire is cancelled. When the rubric cannot be written down in two weeks, the process is not ready for an agent. Set the route selector to "No route named yet" and the calculator will tell you the same thing.
Is the calculator free?
Yes. No sign-up, no email and no obligation, and nothing you type leaves your browser. The guide and the spreadsheet behind it are a separate download that asks for a name and a work email. If you would rather just work it out and never speak to us, that is a legitimate outcome and the tool is built for it.
Once the case holds, which platform?
This page comes first. The guides below come after it, and they work whichever way the arithmetic lands. If the answer here was no, none of them will change that.
- Four ways to make a regulated firm AI-nativeEighteen tasks compared across four paths, with costs and residency.
- Claude implementation guideWhat a firm actually deploys on Claude, and where Claude is the wrong tool.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot guideThe correct SKU, the permission work, and the credit meter underneath it.
- Process automation paybackThe same arithmetic, framed around one manual process rather than a platform.
Work through it yourself, then book a discovery if the case holds
Baseline one workflow on real work for four weeks. You will leave with the before state, three scenarios and a payback month, whether or not you build it with us.