Most teams start with one person on Operations Workbench Starter, free for 30 days. Add LevelOneAI in Claude or ChatGPT, connect your email and add any exports you have, such as open POs or a schedule. Starter shows which changes put orders at risk, with the evidence, and tracks each one to a close. When the whole team needs it, with live ERP data, approvals and write-back, that's the Operations Workbench.

How do Starter, the Workbench and the Operations Engine fit together?

The LevelOneAI Operations Engine does the work: it treats each order, PO or job as one record (Work), compares what changed with what was promised (Context), works out what it affects and who needs to decide (Decision), and assigns, drafts and tracks the next step (Action), until it's resolved. Starter runs the engine on one person's email and the documents they add. A Workbench runs it across a whole team's email, ERP and CRM for one workflow, with live data, approvals and write-back.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. Operations Workbench Starter is free for 30 days, and you don't need a card. After that it's $199/month or $1,990/year (two months free), for 1 user and 1 mailbox. If you don't continue, your account becomes read-only and your data is deleted 30 days later.

What do I need to use Starter?

A paid Claude or ChatGPT plan (the free tiers don't include the access it needs) and a Gmail or Outlook mailbox. For work email, a business or enterprise plan from that provider is recommended. Documents are optional: exports from any ERP or spreadsheet work.

What's the difference between Starter and the Operations Workbench?

Starter works from one person's email and the exports they add, and you set it up yourself in minutes. It's built to show the value on your own work. The Operations Workbench connects live to your ERP and planning data, runs on its own, puts the whole team in one queue, and adds approvals, drafted follow-ups and write-back. Starter fees paid in the 6 months before you buy a Workbench are credited toward its setup.

Which documents should I add to Starter?

Whatever you have, or none. It works on email from the first run, and tells you which document would sharpen the results most. Typical ones are an open-PO export, a production schedule, open sales orders or an AR aging report. It keeps only the fields it needs from them, encrypted, never the files.

It says what it doesn't know. Each fact shows its source and when it arrived. When an email could match more than one order, it asks instead of guessing, and when a document is missing it says "impact not assessed" rather than "no impact." Your team makes the call.

How does billing work?

Starter is billed monthly or annually by card, with a receipt emailed for every payment and invoices on your billing page. Cancel anytime. A Workbench is a one-time setup fee, invoiced on the schedule in your quote, plus an annual platform fee that starts at go-live.

When does my team need a Workbench?

When the work depends on more than one person's inbox: the evidence sits in your ERP, CRM or planning data, several people need to see the same item, and someone has to make sure it closes. A Workbench gives the team one queue, one record per item, approvals and a team view.

What's built, and what do you configure for us?

The Operations Engine, the work queue, the work record, approvals, follow-up tracking and the team view are built. For each Workbench we configure the connections to your systems, the rules that decide what counts as an exception, who owns what, what closes an item, and whether approved changes are written back. Which systems it connects to, and how, is worked out during setup.

Operations Workbench Starter is free for 30 days, then $199/month or $1,990/year. An Operations Workbench is a one-time setup fee, from $20,000 per workflow, plus an annual platform fee that's included in your quote. There's no ongoing services fee: once it's live, your team runs it, and our help is optional. The platform fee covers hosting, AI processing, connector updates and improvements to the Operations Engine. It starts at go-live, and in the first year you can cancel 90 days after go-live if the agreed measures aren't met. The payback calculator compares the setup fee with what the delay costs you each year. The next Workbench reuses the connections you already have, so it costs less to set up. See Pricing for what's included.

How long does setup take?

Starter works the same day. A Workbench typically goes live in 6 to 12 weeks, depending on how many systems it connects and how complex the rules are. We agree the baseline and what success looks like before setup starts.

What happens to our ERP and CRM?

They stay where they are and keep the master data. A Workbench reads from them. Write-back is optional: whether approved updates go back, and to which systems, is decided during setup. Nothing changes in your systems without approval.

What data does LevelOneAI keep?

It's designed to keep only what it needs to run the work, such as references to the source, the facts it extracted (a date, a quantity, a price), status, owners and decisions. For a Workbench, exactly what's stored is agreed with you during setup. Starter never stores email: it keeps short labels, plus the fields it needs from documents you add, encrypted.

What will this ask of our IT team?

Starter needs no IT: you connect your own email in Claude or ChatGPT, and there's a one-page security summary to share with IT. A Workbench needs read-only access to the systems the workflow uses, granted once by whoever administers them, and typically a few hours of IT time during setup. Nothing is installed, and nothing changes in your systems without approval. See Growing Businesses if you don't have an IT department, or Enterprises for how we fit an IT review.

What happens when it isn't sure, or data is missing?

If an email could belong to more than one order or PO, it shows the candidates with their evidence and asks a person to confirm, instead of guessing. If a source is unavailable or a record can't be found, the item is marked incomplete, so your team knows the picture isn't complete. Every fact is labeled confirmed, conflicting, inferred or unknown.

Is this a product or a consulting engagement?

A product. The Operations Engine, the work queue, the work record and approvals are built. Setup configures them to your systems, rules and owners for one workflow. You pay a one-time setup fee and an annual platform fee. There's no ongoing services fee, so your team runs it without us.

Do you have a SOC 2 report?

No SOC 2 report yet. We'll walk your security team through the data flow and complete your security questionnaire on request.

What happens to our data if we stop?

You can export your work history and audit trail. With Starter, your data is deleted 30 days after you cancel or after a trial ends without a paid plan. Your ERP and CRM keep their own data, because they were the record all along.

That's decided with you during scoping, based on your security and IT requirements.

To read the messy information around a piece of work (the email, the attachment, the system field), match it to the right order or PO, compare it with what was promised, and recommend the next step. Every fact is labeled confirmed, conflicting, inferred or unknown, with its source. Your people make the call, and nothing changes in a system without approval.

Why can't we just add an AI agent?

You can, and it will do the steps. What an agent won't do on its own is keep one record of each order across email and your systems, notice a change nobody asked about, know which promise it breaks, and keep the issue open until it's resolved. That's what you'd have to build and maintain around it. LevelOneAI already does that, and works alongside the agents you use. See Why AI Agents Fail under Resources.

How is this different from process mining?

Process mining reads event logs from your ERP or CRM, so it can't see what happens in email, spreadsheets and phone calls, which is where most exceptions start. It also tells you where the process breaks; it doesn't work each exception to a close. A Workbench does.

Why not wait for our ERP or CRM vendor to add AI?

Use it. ERP AI is getting good at work inside the ERP, such as reading a supplier's email and proposing the PO change. A Workbench is for what happens next, across systems: which jobs and customer orders the change puts at risk, what the planner's sheet says, who has to approve, and whether it was actually resolved. If the problem starts and ends inside your ERP, its own AI may be all you need.

When is our ERP's own AI enough?

When the problem starts and ends inside the ERP, updating the record is the whole job, and everything the decision needs is already there. Add a Workbench when the change matters because of what it affects elsewhere (jobs, customer orders, invoices), when the numbers people trust live in a spreadsheet or portal, when resolving it takes several people and an approval, or when someone has to confirm it was actually resolved.

What if our workflow changes?

Rules, owners, thresholds and closing conditions are configuration, so they can be updated as your process changes, without a new project.

What if our team doesn't adopt it?

A Workbench brings the context to each piece of work instead of asking people to go and look for it, and it fits around the systems they already use. We also agree the measures up front, so you can see whether it's working.

All insights

General

Build, Buy or Connect? One Supplier Delay, Three Ways to Handle It

By Shanshan "Sasha" Ma

The build vs. buy debate is easier when you run it on one real piece of work. A single supplier delay, handled three ways: build a tool, buy a tool, or connect the systems you already have. What each takes, who keeps it running, and what it still misses.

The build vs. buy debate never gets old. It usually runs in the abstract: features, licenses, headcount, roadmaps.

At LevelOneAI, we think it's easier to decide on one real piece of work. So here's one, run three ways.

The work

PO 4512 for machined housings is confirmed for Oct 12. On Oct 5, at 7:48 AM, the supplier emails the buyer: tooling problem on line 2, new date Oct 26.

To act on that email, someone has to know four things that live in four places:

The new date is in the supplier's email.
The old date is in the ERP, which still says Oct 12.
The date it's needed is in the production plan: assembly run A-88 needs the housings on Oct 20.
What it puts at risk is in the customer orders: Brightline ($138,000, ships Oct 28) and Keller ($76,000, ships Nov 2).

Then someone has to decide. Wait and ship $214,000 late, expedite for $9,400, or ask the supplier to split the shipment for $1,800. And someone has to make sure the answer actually comes back, the ERP gets updated and the parts arrive.

In most companies, that someone is the buyer, with three tabs open and a phone. Whether the work gets stuck depends on how busy the buyer is that week.

Here are three ways to fix that.

Option 1: Build it

Your team, or a capable person with an AI coding tool, builds a tracker. It reads supplier emails, picks out the PO number and the new date, compares it with an ERP export and flags the difference.

What it takes: a first version can come together in days. Getting it right takes longer. Supplier emails reference POs in a dozen different ways, threads mix three orders, and the ERP export changes format after an upgrade. Each of those is a fix someone has to make.

Who keeps it running: whoever built it. When they're busy, or leave, the tool quietly gets out of date and the buyer goes back to the tabs.

What it still misses on PO 4512: usually the last two steps. A tracker that flags "date changed" doesn't know run A-88 needs the parts on the 20th unless someone also wires in the plan, and it doesn't keep the issue open until the split shipment is confirmed and received.

When it's the right answer: the workflow is unique to you, it's part of why customers choose you, and you have people whose job it is to maintain it. (More on that trade-off in Vibe Coding Your Own Business System Is Easy. Keeping It Running Is the Hard Part.)

Option 2: Buy a tool for it

You buy a supplier portal, a supply chain visibility tool or an ERP add-on, so suppliers confirm dates in a structured way and changes land in the system.

What it takes: a subscription, an implementation, and the part nobody quotes: getting suppliers to use it. Some will. Many keep emailing, because email is what they use with every other customer.

Who keeps it running: the vendor maintains the software. Your team maintains the adoption.

What it still misses on PO 4512: the tool sees the date change if the supplier enters it there. It usually doesn't know about run A-88 or the Brightline and Keller orders, because those live in other systems. The buyer still connects the dots and still chases the close.

When it's the right answer: the gap sits inside one function, your suppliers will adopt it, and you need what the tool does well, such as structured confirmations, supplier scorecards or documents in one place.

Option 3: Connect the systems you already have

Keep the ERP, the email and the plan where they are. Add something that reads across them and holds the work while it's moving.

What it takes: read access. The supplier email is matched to PO 4512, compared with the ERP date and the need date, and linked to the customer orders it affects. The buyer sees one item: what changed, what it puts at risk, the three options and what each costs. They approve the split on Oct 5, the day the email arrived. The item stays open until the supplier confirms in writing and 60 housings are received for run A-88.

Who keeps it running: the matching, the rules and the follow-through are maintained as a product, not as a side project. Your team owns the decisions.

What it still misses: it doesn't replace a supplier portal if you need suppliers to self-serve, and it can only connect what it can read. If the production plan lives in someone's head, that's the first thing to fix.

When it's the right answer: the work crosses systems, the information already exists, and the problem is that nobody owns the connection between them.

Side by side, on PO 4512

Sees the supplier's email. Build: if you build it to. Buy: only if the supplier uses the tool. Connect: yes.
Knows run A-88 and the customer orders. Build: if you wire in the plan and orders. Buy: usually not. Connect: yes, from the plan and order data.
Shows the options and what each costs. Build: rarely. Buy: rarely. Connect: yes.
Keeps the issue open until it's resolved. Build: if you build it to. Buy: usually not. Connect: yes.
Who maintains it. Build: your team. Buy: the vendor, plus supplier adoption. Connect: the vendor.
Time to a first result. Build: days for a prototype, months before you can rely on it. Buy: months, including the supplier rollout. Connect: the same day for one buyer, weeks for the team.

None of the three is always right. Sometimes the answer is better software. Sometimes it's connecting the gaps between the systems you already have. Often it's both: buy the tool your suppliers will use, and connect what it knows to everything else.

Three questions to decide

Before you compare vendors or start a build, take one real exception from last month and ask:

Where did the information live? If the answer is one system, improve that system. If it's four, the gap is between them.
Who connected it, and how long did it take? That's the work you're actually trying to support, and the cost you're trying to remove.
What did it cost when it was late? One exception, one number. If you can't name it, you can't size the fix or prove it worked.

The goal isn't to make people adapt to the software. It's to make the software support the work, whether you're starting from scratch or building on what you have.

Try it on your own work

You can see what option 3 looks like on your own email and an open-PO export with Operations Workbench Starter, free for 30 days. When the whole team needs it, with live ERP data and approvals, that's the Operations Workbench. For the decisions to make before any of this, see Five Decisions That Decide Whether Your Software Supports the Work.

The PO 4512 example is illustrative, with a sample company and data.

Talk to us