Executive Model Brief: buy better business outcomes

The decision this week

Before renewing an AI contract, compare the cost of a completed, acceptable task. Include staff review, rework and integration costs alongside model fees. A cheaper answer that needs more correction may be the more expensive workflow.

Document work: help people review the right fields

Microsoft describes an insurer using AI extraction with evidence and confidence signals to focus reviewers’ attention. Its held-out evaluation selected 41% fewer fields for targeted review while retaining more than 80% of known errors in that selection. People still reviewed every field. This vendor-reported result is not a 41% staffing or time saving.

Service work: executions are not resolutions

Anthropic reports that Zendesk custom service agents reached one million executions in seven weeks of early access. That is usage, not one million solved customer problems or independently verified savings. The useful business question is whether a specific workflow reduces repeat contacts and review effort.

Your next management meeting

Give a team lead one repeatable workflow and an owner. Agree what a successful result means before choosing a model.

• Operations: compare acceptable results, corrections and turnaround time against today’s process.
• Finance: calculate total cost per accepted case, including human review.
• Technology: confirm access controls, data handling and the route back to a person.