AI investment evaluation
Which problems deserve
your time and money?
Find your most worthwhile problem, or refine the one you have in mind. We help you shape work worth doing before choosing whether and how to use AI.
Discuss an investment decisionIllustrative investment decision
Should engineering knowledge become an AI workflow?
A manufacturing team wants an agent to help employees use recorded engineering experience. The investment depends on the work it will support, the quality of the records and the people needed to tailor and use it.
- The records
- If key reasoning lives only with senior engineers, preparing useful records becomes part of the commitment.
- The working day
- If employees need guidance at a different point in the workflow, the application and expected use need to change with them.
- The delivery effort
- If tailoring requires more specialist time, weigh that commitment against both the benefit and other work those people could do.
A worthwhile decision accounts for what could change. Each assumption belongs alongside the potential improvement.
Give business and technical teams a shared basis for deciding.
Start with the problem and the result you want. We bring business and technical colleagues together to understand the actual workflow, people, systems and constraints before comparing alternatives and tool fit.
An off-the-shelf product may be sufficient. We recommend it when it is, and can deliver conventional software, automation or workflow changes as well as AI solutions. Together, we define a worthwhile scope, a baseline and measures relevant to your objective.
Cornerstone Red uses Universal Risk Quantification (URQ) to evaluate AI-project upside, downside, costs and uncertainty. It keeps important assumptions and possible outcomes visible so the people accountable can decide what commitment and exposure are acceptable.
What belongs in the evaluation?
Judge the result that matters to your business at an acceptable total cost—not task speed or assumed labour savings alone.
- Potential upside
- What outcome matters in this workflow? Agree a baseline and relevant measures, accounting for quality and risk where they affect the result.
- Potential downside
- What could go wrong, reduce the benefit or create a loss the business would have to absorb?
- Costs and readiness
- Include applicable implementation, integration, adoption, review and rework, running and maintenance costs. Are the records, systems and people ready for the work?
- Uncertainty
- Which assumptions remain unsettled, and could a different outcome change the decision?