Every Figure, With Its Arithmetic.
Findings from real engagements, anonymised, with every assumption in the open.
Nine minutes. Your own numbers. No call required.
Sector, Size, And Nothing Else.
Client work appears here as sector, revenue band and headcount. No names, no logos, no cities, no dates that would identify an engagement.
Every figure appears with the arithmetic that produced it. The rates and group sizes we assume are labelled as assumptions, so a reader can substitute their own and watch the number move. A drain that could not be given an hour count is published as unpriced and excluded from the total.
We publish no benchmark data because we have not measured enough companies to have any. Every report from the Cortex AI Audit uses the reader's own figures only, which is why the number describes their business.
One published finding reads as a fluke. Two read as a method. This page grows one engagement at a time.
62,000 EUR A Year, From Two Answers.
Published 3 September 2026. Last revised 3 September 2026.
The company
A marketing agency. Two to five million euro in revenue, 31 people, one office. Four to seven separate software tools. Client information split across email inboxes, a messaging app and the customer records system. Artificial intelligence in use today: a few people use a general chat tool.
What the managing director said
- How long would it take to get a specific number?
- About an hour.
- How often do you see an accurate pipeline?
- Monthly.
- How fast is a new lead answered?
- Next day or later.
- How consistent is follow-up?
- It depends on the salesperson.
- When someone senior leaves, how much do you lose?
- Some of it.
- Are new processes documented?
- Partially.
Five of those six are one finding stated five ways. The business runs on information that exists and cannot be reached, and on judgment that exists and is not held anywhere.
What it costs
Two drains had hours attached. Only those two are quantified.
Leadership time in internal meetings
Stated at ten to fifteen hours a week, taken at the midpoint of 12.5. Leadership group of five at 31 staff: managing director, operations director, three department heads. Forty six working weeks, 55 euro loaded hourly cost.
158,125 EUR a year
Preparing reports and summaries
Stated at five to fifteen hours a week, taken at the midpoint of ten. Forty six working weeks, 40 euro loaded hourly cost across mixed seniority.
18,400 EUR a year
Total quantified: 176,525 EUR a year
The figure is a floor
Six further drains were named in the same conversation and none could be given an hour count. They are excluded from every total on this page. 62,000 euro is what two answers were worth.
What is recoverable
A business still needs to meet.
| Drain | Annual | Recoverable | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership internal meetings | 158,125 | 47,438 | 30 percent. The portion spent establishing what happened and sharing numbers, which a live operating picture and an automatic decision record remove. The rest is deliberation and stays. |
| Report and summary preparation | 18,400 | 14,720 | 80 percent. Assembly is automatable, commentary is not. |
| Total recoverable | 62,158 |
Against a build
On these figures a single system pays back in under three months. A connected set of systems pays back in around seven months. Our largest engagement was modelled and ruled out, because payback ran past sixteen months. The rule that ruled it out is part of the method.
| Tier | Payback | Position |
|---|---|---|
| Single System | 2.9 months | within twelve months |
| Core Systems | 7.05 months | recommended |
| Operating Layer | 17.4 months | modelled, not proposed: payback runs past twelve months |
Payback uses tier midpoints against the 62,158 euro recoverable figure. Continuity is excluded from these figures and the exclusion is stated on the method page of every report.
The Figure Is A Floor.
Six further drains were named by the managing director and none could be given an hour count. Chasing follow-ups. Onboarding new clients. Invoicing and payment chasing. Answering the same internal questions. Client communication. Training staff.
That inability is itself the finding. A business that cannot price its own drains cannot prioritise them, and every one of those six is larger than it appears precisely because nobody has counted it.
The stated bottlenecks point the same way: client churn, a ceiling on growth created by the hours spent training and onboarding, management difficulty as the hierarchy grows, and low visibility over operational and financial numbers scattered across platforms.
62,000 euro is what two answers were worth. It is a floor.
Four Pages, Every Basis Shown.
This is the document a completed Cortex AI Audit produces. Page one is shown in full at the sample report, along with the drain tables, the unpriced list, the five component notes and the first move.
Every Engagement Begins With An Audit.
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