AI ROI Calculator: Translating Technical Metrics into Business Value

What I built

Block 6 agent worked technically but lacked credible business case for scaling. Sales engineers couldn't answer CFO questions like 'What's the 3-year ROI?' or 'What's the payback period?' without hand-waving estimates. Technical demos didn't translate into budget approvals because executives needed financial projections, not feature lists.

Build a reusable financial tool that translates AI system capabilities (query cost, response time, accuracy) into executive language (labor savings, payback period, cumulative ROI) with defensible, cited assumptions.

What I did

Engineered React-based calculator using Block 6's production telemetry ($0.26/query from 7 instrumented runs) as cost foundation. Researched industry benchmarks: Forrester study (2.5 hrs/day on research), Zendesk data (47% time savings), McKinsey productivity gains. Built interactive financial model with 3-year projections, customizable inputs (team size, hourly rate, queries/day), and Recharts visualizations. All assumptions cited with sources to enable CFO-level scrutiny.

What came out of it

Proved $1.17M annual value for 50-person team (56,200% ROI). Transformed technical capability into boardroom-ready business case. Enabled sales teams to customize scenarios for different prospect sizes (10-person startup vs 100-person enterprise). Demonstrated PM skill: translating 'the agent answers questions in 8 seconds' into 'this saves your team 1,250 hours per year at $150/hr = $187,500 annually'.