A ranked list of your processes, with the maths shown
Every candidate scored on volume, repetitiveness, and cost-to-verify, with the hours and dollars attached. You can act on this list without hiring me for the build.
Which of our manual processes should AI run first? The repetitive, high-volume one that is cheap to check.
You get the answer to that question in writing, with the hours and dollars attached, before you spend anything on building it.
The first process to automate is the one that is repetitive, high in volume, and cheap to verify when the AI gets it wrong. Those three together decide the return. A process that runs twice a month, or where a wrong answer is expensive to catch, is a bad first candidate no matter how annoying it is.
What is this actually costing you today?
You have said some version of this
- "We know AI could do this, but nobody here has time to work out which part."
- "We automated the wrong thing first and it saved almost nothing."
- "Half the team's week goes to work a system should be doing."
- "We are not sure it would even pay for itself."
What it costs while it stays unfixed
- ~$27,000/yr Ten hours a week of manual work at a $52/hr loaded rate, for one person.
- The wrong process automating a low-volume task first burns the budget and the goodwill for the next attempt.
- No baseline without a before number, you cannot tell whether the automation actually paid for itself.
What do you actually get at the end?
An honest "do not automate this" column
Some processes should stay manual. Naming them is most of the value, because it stops the expensive mistake before it happens.
The first automation, built and running
The top-ranked process, implemented against your real systems, with the verification step that lets you trust the output.
A measured before and after
Hours recorded before the build and after it. If the number does not move, you will hear that from me first.
Does any of this actually work?
These are my own numbers, on my own systems, with the measurement date and instrument named so you can re-run them. They are not client case studies, because I will not put a testimonial on this page before I have one worth quoting.
5 minutes the polling interval of the deploy automation running this site
When my hosting provider's Git integration broke, I replaced it in an afternoon with a polling deploy agent that has an atomic lock to prevent concurrent runs. That specific bug, two deploys of the same commit firing at once, is the kind of thing automation work is actually made of.
$52/hr the loaded rate I use for ROI maths, stated so you can argue with it
Most automation pitches hide the assumption that makes the payback look good. Mine is written down: a $52/hr fully loaded cost for the person currently doing the work. Substitute your real number and the ranking may change.
How does this compare to the alternatives?
| This engagement | An automation agency | A no-code tool subscription | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Decides what to automate first | Yes, with the maths shown | You bring the process, they build it | |
| Will tell you not to automate | Yes, in writing | Rarely, it is billable either way | |
| Starting cost | $500 audit | $5,000+ engagement minimum | |
| Handles your edge cases | Yes | Templates cover the generic path | |
| Before and after measured | Yes, hours recorded both sides | Usually asserted, not measured | |
| Ongoing cost | None, you own it | Per-seat or per-run, forever | |
What does it cost?
$500 to $1,500 audit
A week inside your stack produces the ranked list, the ROI maths, and the remediation plan with effort estimates. Building the first automation is quoted separately once you know which one it is, and you are free to build it yourself or with someone else.
Start with a scoping call →Or email hello@chudi.dev directly.
NO DISCOVERY-CALL FUNNEL · NO RETAINER LOCK-IN · WRITTEN SCOPE BEFORE ANY INVOICE
Questions people ask before hiring me
Which business processes should we automate with AI first?
Rank candidates on three things: how often the process runs, how repetitive each run is, and how cheap it is to check when the output is wrong. A high-volume, highly repetitive, cheap-to-verify process pays back fastest. A process that runs twice a month, or where a wrong answer is expensive to catch, is a poor first choice however irritating it is.
What does an AI automation consultant actually do?
Two things. First, work out which of your processes are worth automating and which are not, with the hours and dollars attached so you can check the reasoning. Second, build the top-ranked one against your real systems. The first half is genuinely separable, and plenty of clients only need that.
How much does AI automation consulting cost?
The audit is $500 to $1,500 depending on how many processes and systems are in scope. Building the first automation is quoted separately, typically $2,000 to $5,000. Splitting them is deliberate: you should be able to find out whether automation pays before committing to build anything.
How do I calculate the ROI of AI automation?
Hours currently spent, times a fully loaded hourly cost, times the fraction the automation actually removes, minus the build cost and any ongoing model spend. The fraction is where most estimates cheat: automation that still needs a human to check every output removes far less than it appears to.
What should we not automate with AI?
Anything low-volume, anything where a wrong answer is expensive or slow to detect, and anything where the real problem is an unclear process rather than a slow one. Automating a broken process makes it fail faster. That last case comes up more often than the first two.
Will AI automation replace our staff?
In the engagements I run, it removes a specific repetitive task, not a role. That is partly ethics and mostly maths: the tasks that automate cleanly are the narrow, high-volume ones, and almost nobody's job is only that. If a vendor is promising headcount reduction, ask which exact tasks and what the verification step costs.