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

Contract Management Needs More Than a Repository. It Needs to Keep the Work Moving.

By Shanshan Ma

A signed, stored contract still has work around it: deliverables, renewals, amendments, approvals. How AI can connect contract obligations to that work without replacing your CLM or procurement system.

"The contract renews in 45 days. Does anyone know if we're keeping this vendor?"

The contract system shows the expiration date. The business owner raised performance concerns in an email last month. A required service report never arrived. Finance is waiting for new pricing, and procurement is waiting for the business owner. Every piece exists somewhere. Nobody has the whole picture.

A contract isn't finished when it's signed, stored and entered into a system. That's when the work around it starts.

The work around the contract

Procurement platforms, CLM systems and document repositories do their jobs: records, versions, milestones, approvals. But day-to-day contract administration runs across all of them, plus email and meetings:

A renewal is coming up, but the performance review is incomplete and pricing is still being discussed.
A deliverable is overdue, and progress updates are scattered across email, project records and meeting notes.
An amendment is being negotiated by email, while the official record still shows the old terms.
An issue needs input from procurement, legal, finance and the business owner, and each holds part of the context.

None of this means the contract system is broken. A contract is a living set of obligations, dependencies and decisions. When those connections aren't visible, people become the integration layer: searching, comparing, reminding and rebuilding the current situation by hand.

Reading a contract isn't the same as moving it forward

AI is already good at reviewing contracts, extracting clauses and finding key dates. That's useful. But it answers a different question.

A tool that extracts a renewal date knows when the contract expires. It doesn't know the performance assessment is missing.
A tool that summarizes an email knows what the vendor said. It doesn't link it to the obligation, the overdue deliverable and the person who owns it.
A dashboard shows open tasks. It doesn't notice that a small update in one thread changed a dependency somewhere else.

Knowing what a contract says is not the same as knowing what needs to happen next. For that, teams need answers to five questions:

What changed since the last review?
Which contract, obligation, deliverable or decision does it affect?
What's still incomplete, unresolved or inconsistent?
Who owns the next step, and by when?
What evidence supports it?

The answers have to come from the contract, the records and the actual communications, not from assumptions.

What a connected contract workbench does

LevelOneAI focuses on work that gets stuck between systems. Your CLM, procurement system and repository stay where they are. A workbench sits beside them and organizes activity around each contract:

Shows what needs attention, not just what's due. Alongside the renewal date, it shows what's blocking the decision: a missing assessment, an open vendor issue, an incomplete approval.
Connects updates to the contract they affect. A vendor email about a delayed deliverable is linked to that obligation and its follow-up. When the match is uncertain, it asks instead of guessing.
Makes dependencies visible. A renewal may depend on performance, budget, legal review and the business owner. The workbench shows which of those are still open.
Helps people follow through. It drafts the follow-up, gathers the evidence and suggests the owner. With approved integrations, it can create tasks or update designated fields.

People stay in charge. Amendments, legal interpretation and approvals follow your existing authority and review process.

The renewal, revisited

For the service contract renewing in 45 days, the workbench would show:

Open items: renewal recommendation not confirmed by the business owner; vendor performance evidence incomplete; updated pricing not received.
Why it matters: the renewal decision slips if these aren't resolved in time.
Next steps: request the missing report from the vendor, ask the business owner to complete the assessment, follow up on pricing, and track approvals against the deadline.

Each finding links to its evidence, and confirmed facts are kept separate from possible risks. The team checks it and decides.

That's not a smarter reminder. It connects the date, the obligations, the people and the unresolved work that decide whether you can make the call on time.

Keep your systems. Start with one workflow.

The answer to fragmented contract work usually isn't another large implementation. Our approach:

Keep the systems of record. The authoritative contract, approved terms and official status stay where they are.
Connect evidence to work. Use records, documents and communications to understand the state of each contract.
Surface exceptions and dependencies. Missing information, conflicting updates, open decisions.
Keep people in control. Traceable evidence, with permissions and approvals for anything consequential.
Prove value first. Show less manual investigation before expanding.

Good first workflows:

Renewal readiness: expiration dates, performance, pricing and approvals in one view before the decision.
Deliverable and obligation tracking: each requirement matched to evidence of completion, the owner and the follow-up.
Amendment coordination: proposed changes, current terms, correspondence and required reviews together. Interpretation and approval stay with authorized people.
Vendor issue resolution: performance concerns, missed deliverables and remediation tied to the contract and its owners.

Not every contract workflow needs an AI layer. Pick one, take a baseline and measure: time spent gathering context, manual follow-ups, on-time renewal decisions, and how often the dependencies it finds are real. (For the wider method, see How to Integrate AI with Your Workflow.)

Try this week

List every contract renewing in the next 90 days. For each, check whether the business owner has confirmed the decision.
Pick one overdue deliverable and count how many places you had to look to find its status.
Ask your team which contract question they answer most often by searching email. That's your first workflow.

A contract is managed well when the people responsible can see what needs attention, and move the work forward.

See how the LevelOneAI Operations Engine works

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