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

Your CRM Isn't Going Away. And Salespeople Still Don't Want to Do Data Entry.

By Shanshan "Sasha" Ma

AI sales assistants that need reps to feed them notes recreate the chore they were meant to remove. The better approach builds context from the email, calendar, CRM and quotes that already exist.

"I'm not typing notes for the AI either."

A rep walks out of a customer meeting, has eight minutes before the next call, and gets a nudge: "Dictate a summary so your assistant can update the CRM." It sounds easy. It's still one more admin task, and it's the first one to get skipped.

Two things are true at most companies:

The CRM is staying. Years of process, integrations, reporting and customer history live there. Replacing it to make reps more productive is rarely realistic.
Salespeople don't want more data entry, even when the thing asking for it is an AI agent.

So an AI sales assistant that depends on reps to feed it context recreates the exact behavior it was supposed to eliminate. The better question is: can we build an accurate picture of the deal from information that already exists?

The information is there. It's just scattered.

A normal sales process already produces plenty of signal:

Emails: customer questions, changed requirements, commitments.
Calendars: meetings held, follow-ups scheduled, appointments missed.
Meeting transcripts: buying signals, objections, agreed next steps.
The CRM: accounts, opportunities, stages, forecast dates.
Quotes and orders: pricing, delivery timelines, fulfillment.
Internal messages: approvals, dependencies, blockers.

Each system holds part of the story. None of them holds the current state of the deal. So the rep has to remember what the customer asked last week, find the email, check whether the quote changed and work out who acts next. Meanwhile the manager sees a "healthy" opportunity in the CRM that changed two days ago.

That isn't a data-entry problem. It's a context and coordination problem.

One request, followed all the way through

After a meeting, the customer emails: "We need the equipment two weeks earlier than planned. Can you confirm by Friday?"

Here's what an Operations Workbench does with that:

Collect the signals. With the right permissions, it pulls in the customer's emails, the CRM opportunity, the current quote and the related order. The rep doesn't write a summary.
Structure what matters.
- What changed: delivery needed two weeks earlier.
- What was agreed: the rep confirms feasibility by Friday.
- What's affected: the quoted timeline, and possibly the delivery plan.
- Who acts: the rep responds; operations checks capacity.
- What's uncertain: whether the earlier date is possible.
Each fact keeps its source, and an explicit commitment is kept separate from an inference. Nothing becomes a confirmed CRM fact silently.
Get the work moving.
- A follow-up task for the rep, due Friday.
- A request to operations to confirm the earlier date.
- A flag on the conflict with the current timeline.
- A proposed CRM or order update, for someone to approve.
- Tracking until the answer is sent and the question is closed.

The result isn't a better meeting note. It's an accurate picture of the deal and a process that's already moving.

What teams use today, and where each one fits

Most sales teams have already patched this gap somehow. Each patch does one job well:

The CRM's own AI agent. Logs activity, summarizes calls, updates records and suggests next steps, right next to your data. It's the best fit when the work lives inside the CRM.
Zapier or similar automation. Moves data on a trigger: a form fill creates a lead, a won deal posts to Slack or creates an order in the ERP. It's reliable when the rule is stable and the data is structured.
CRM plus Notion (or a shared doc). Deal rooms, account plans, meeting notes and checklists the CRM can't hold well. It works as the team's shared memory, as long as someone keeps it current.

Each covers one piece. None of them notices that the customer's email changed a date that the quote, the CRM and the operations plan still assume. A Zap fires on the field it watches, not on a sentence in an email. A Notion page is only as current as the last person who edited it. The CRM agent sees the CRM. The result is the same gap with more places to check.

That's where an Operations Workbench fits. It doesn't replace any of these; it works across them:

Keep Zapier for moving structured data between apps.
Keep the CRM agent for activity inside the CRM.
Keep Notion for the notes and plans people write on purpose.
Add an Operations Workbench that reads across all of them and the inbox, notices when a commitment changed, and makes sure the next step happens.

The test is simple: if a well-configured CRM agent or a Zap solves your problem, use it. A Workbench earns its place only if it catches what falls between them. (More on that line in Thinking About Replacing Salesforce?)

Where LevelOneAI fits

That's what LevelOneAI does. The CRM stays the system of record for CRM data, email and meetings stay where conversations happen, and your automations keep running. What we add is an Operations Workbench between them:

Connect evidence from several sources to the deal or order it belongs to.
Track what changed over time, not just the latest snapshot.
Show what each change affects, and who owns the next step.
Recommend actions, and follow through until they're done.

That means catching a customer commitment that conflicts with a delivery date, a follow-up that never happened, or a dependency that's about to put a deal at risk.

It also means guardrails. Permissions are respected, every fact keeps its source, uncertainty is shown rather than hidden, and people approve anything consequential. Not every signal deserves an action, and not every inference deserves to become a record.

Try this week

Pick three deals that changed recently. Compare what the CRM says with what the latest customer emails say.
Ask two reps how much time they spent last week updating the CRM or writing notes for a tool. Then ask what they skipped.
Find one deal where the next step depends on someone outside sales. Check whether that person knows it's on them.

The question isn't "how do we get salespeople to feed the AI?" It's "how do we connect what already exists, understand what it means, and make sure the next step happens?"

See how the LevelOneAI Operations Engine works

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