Build an AI Business Case Without Inventing ROI
An AI business case should connect a defined workflow change to an outcome the buyer values, using evidence the buyer can inspect. Keep measured results, estimates, and assumptions visibly separate. If the current process has no trustworthy baseline, the next step is to establish one, not to fill the gap with a persuasive savings percentage.
AI and analytics company owners often need to help a champion explain a project to colleagues who were absent from the demonstration. Those colleagues may care about implementation effort, operating cost, reliability, or the decision to use existing software instead. A commercial business case should help them compare choices rather than make the champion repeat the seller’s presentation.
Start with the buyer’s existing work
Describe one workflow and its current consequence for the business. Identify the users, volume source, quality standard, review requirement, and business owner. Ask where the present information comes from and whether it covers ordinary work or only selected examples. A process owner’s rough impression is useful discovery, but it should be labeled as an impression until checked.
Use the same definitions when comparing the current and proposed process. If the baseline includes review and corrections but the pilot measures only initial output speed, the apparent improvement is not a fair comparison. Agree which work remains with a person, which work changes, and which new operating tasks the proposed solution introduces.
Make a simple evidence ledger
For each important claim, record the claim itself, the evidence, its date and scope, the person who can explain it, and the remaining uncertainty. A small ledger can show that one part of the case is measured while another remains an estimate. It also helps a buyer answer a finance or procurement question without asking the salesperson to recreate the reasoning.
Microsoft’s AI value guidance distinguishes adoption, workflow change, and business outcomes, using baselines and consistent measurement. Keep that chain visible. Activity alone does not establish reduced costs, additional revenue, or a reliable return on investment.
Compare benefits with the full work required
Ask the delivery lead to identify the activities needed to make the proposed workflow usable. These might include data preparation, integration, access review, training, validation, monitoring, and ongoing customer coordination. The buyer may also need internal staff time. Do not treat those contributions as free simply because they do not appear on the provider’s invoice.
Keep commercial calculations separate from technical assurance. A model’s output quality, suitability of data, and operating constraints need qualified review. The salesperson can organize the information and explain assumptions, but should not independently approve an engineering design or imply that a business case eliminates delivery risk. Technical and commercial confidence answer different questions.
Show alternatives fairly
Include the buyer’s realistic options: improve the existing process, use a current product capability, narrow the workflow, choose another provider, delay for readiness work, or proceed with a bounded project. Avoid presenting a deliberately weak alternative to make your preferred option look inevitable. Ask what the customer would do if they did not buy this year.
NIST’s AI RMF Core organizes risk work around govern, map, measure, and manage. Keep operational responsibility visible in the purchasing discussion. A benefits estimate should not obscure the buyer’s questions about how the system will be managed.
Use a decision table instead of one headline number
- Outcome: the workflow or business result being considered and its accountable owner.
- Evidence: measured baseline and pilot observations, with sample and period identified.
- Assumptions: adoption, future volume, review effort, and operating conditions still unproven.
- Costs: provider charges plus relevant implementation and ongoing customer effort.
- Alternatives: practical choices the buyer can make instead of this proposal.
- Decision: proceed, narrow, gather evidence, defer, or stop, with the next approval named.
If a calculation is useful, let the buyer inspect the inputs. Use a range for uncertain assumptions and explain what changes the result. A sensitivity discussion can be more useful than a polished single figure. Do not describe a hypothetical calculation as an average achieved by customers or as a result Escencion or the provider has already delivered.
Illustrative example: AI-assisted research preparation
Imagine a data company piloting an internal research assistant for a customer’s account team. Users report faster preparation, but the pilot has not yet measured the time spent checking references or correcting missing details. The evidence ledger records the positive user feedback while keeping the total-effort question open. The seller does not convert the initial impression directly into promised payroll savings.
The next agreed action is to compare a defined set of tasks under the existing workflow and the proposed reviewed workflow. The buyer’s process owner chooses the cases and checks whether quality is comparable. At the decision meeting, the case can explain both the observed result and the limits of that comparison. It may justify a narrower rollout rather than an immediate company-wide commitment.
Make the final review useful to an approver
Send the decision table before the review, with links to the relevant evidence and named owners for open items. During the meeting, ask which assumption could change the purchasing decision and what would resolve it. Record objections as questions to answer, not obstacles to pressure away. A clear “not yet” can be more actionable than an unsupported verbal yes.
This approach gives your team a repeatable way to support an AI purchasing decision while respecting the buyer’s judgment. The goal is a business case that survives a careful internal review. A closed deal still depends on need, fit, authority, commercial agreement, and the provider’s ability to deliver the approved scope.
Put the business work under clear ownership
Escencion provides Managed Sales for technology companies, with MSPs and MSSPs as our current client focus. If you want help managing a defined part of your sales or business operations, discuss the work and your company’s fit with Escencion. Technical validation, engineering, approvals, and technical delivery stay with the qualified provider unless separately agreed.
Research and further reading
The operating framework above is a proposed approach, not a reported Escencion customer result. These primary sources support the specific distinctions discussed:
