AI ROI Reality Check

Vendors promise ROI "within 6 months." The real median is 18–36 months — if ever. Check yours with actual data.

Your AI Project ROI

Your numbers in, honest math out. No optimistic assumptions.

Vendor-quoted project cost (total, not monthly)

Deployment model

Company size

Expected monthly savings / revenue from AI (be honest)

Touches regulated data?

Have clean, labeled data?

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True 3-Year Cost

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Breakeven Point

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3-Year ROI

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Success Probability

Cost Breakdown (3 Years)

Vendor-quoted cost—

Data preparation & cleaning—

Integration & MLOps—

Ongoing monitoring & retraining (36 mo)—

Compliance & legal—

Change management & training—

Total true cost—

Vendor quote as % of true cost—

How We Calculate This

The multipliers come from RAND, S&P Global, Pertama Partners, and Gartner — independent research, not vendor-funded studies. We deliberately exclude vendor-supplied success rates.

ROI Timeline Reality (Industry Data)

Milestone	Vendor Promise	Actual Median
Proof of concept	2–4 weeks	4–8 weeks
POC → Production	2–3 months	6–14 months
Full adoption	"Immediate"	12–24 months
Positive ROI	"Within 6 months"	18–36 months

The $0 Alternative

Before committing budget, run a free AI readiness audit: inventory your top 5 manual processes, assess data quality, and calculate the dollar value of improvement. If no single process justifies $50K+ in annual savings, use off-the-shelf SaaS tools — don't build custom AI.