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 ERP Says 2 Weeks. Your Supplier Takes 6. Which Number Is Your Team Planning Around?

By Shanshan "Sasha" Ma

When supplier performance changes but ERP lead times don't, production gets planned around a number nobody believes. How to spot the drift early and connect it to the orders at risk.

"The ERP says two weeks. Everyone on the floor knows it's six."

A supplier's lead time is set to two weeks in your ERP. Purchasing reorders on that number. Production schedules assume the parts arrive on time.

Then deliveries start taking four weeks. Then five. A buyer learns from an email that the next shipment is late again. Someone updates a spreadsheet. A planner quietly pads the schedule from experience.

The ERP still says two weeks.

Now you have two versions of reality: the number driving the plan, and the knowledge people use to work around it.

The ERP isn't wrong. It just isn't told.

ERP systems like NetSuite are good at structured transactions: POs, promised dates, receipts. But supplier reliability rarely changes in one clean system event. It drifts:

Promised dates slip a few days at a time.
Partial shipments become normal.
Delay notices arrive by email before anyone touches the PO.
Buyers know which suppliers are struggling, but that knowledge never reaches the planning data.

Each signal looks manageable on its own. Together they mean a planning assumption has stopped being true. The cost shows up as production disruption, expedited freight, extra safety stock, MRP recommendations built on bad lead times, and hours spent chasing suppliers and reconciling updates.

The problem isn't one late shipment. It's not noticing the pattern in time to change decisions.

A past-due report answers the wrong question

Most teams can list POs that are already late. Planners need answers to different questions:

Which suppliers consistently take longer than the lead time in our system?
Is this supplier getting worse, or was that a one-off?
Which open POs are exposed to that pattern?
Has a supplier emailed a delay the ERP doesn't show yet?
Which orders need attention now, and who should follow up?

That's the difference between reporting what happened and connecting new evidence to the decisions that come next. It doesn't take a new ERP. It takes a way to connect supplier emails, actual delivery history, system assumptions and the open orders that depend on them.

What it takes to see supplier reliability

It doesn't take a new system. It takes working across the information you already have:

Compare recorded lead times with actual deliveries. Use PO and receipt history to find suppliers whose real delivery times consistently differ from what's recorded, and separate persistent change from isolated delays.
Tie supplier emails to the orders. "We're running a week behind on the next shipment" is the first sign of a change when the ERP still shows the original date. The update is linked to the right supplier and PO when the evidence supports the match, and held for review when it doesn't.
Show which orders are exposed. A supplier warning only matters through the open POs and required dates it affects.
Score the risk and the evidence separately. How likely is a miss, and how much should you trust that estimate? A supplier with repeated late deliveries and a fresh delay notice is a strong case for action. A supplier with two old deliveries may be risky, but the evidence is too thin to act on with confidence.
Route it to the right person. Each exposed order comes with the reason, an owner and a suggested follow-up, and stays open until the date is confirmed. Changes to ERP records or production plans still go through your normal approvals.

The goal isn't another supplier scorecard. It's a defensible reason to look at a specific order, with enough context to decide what to do.

Start narrow

Your ERP stays the system of record, and your team keeps its processes. A first workflow can start with one supplier category:

Compare recorded lead times with a few months of actual receipts.
Find suppliers whose performance has materially changed.
Pick up delay notices from email and match them to open POs.
Measure whether catching changes earlier prevented shortages or expediting.

Measure success in operational outcomes, not in how many anomalies the AI finds.

Try this week

Pick your five most important suppliers. Compare each one's recorded lead time with its last ten actual deliveries.
Ask your buyers which supplier they quietly pad, and by how much. Check whether that padding appears anywhere in the system.
Find the last delay you learned about by email. How long did it take to reach the PO, and did production know before the parts were due?

A two-week lead time may have been right when the supplier was onboarded. The question is whether anyone notices when it stops being true.

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