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

When a Shipment Goes Off Track, the Real Work Begins

By Shanshan "Sasha" Ma

Learn how logistics teams can reduce the manual work behind shipment delays, carrier follow-ups, and delivery exceptions without replacing their existing systems.

A shipment delay is rarely just a tracking problem.

A carrier reports that a pickup will be late. A delivery appointment may need to change. A customer wants an update. The operations team has to figure out what happened, which commitments are affected, and how to respond before a small disruption becomes a bigger one.

The shipment may already be visible in a transportation management system. The carrier may have a portal. Tracking information may be available.

Yet someone still has to connect the dots.

That is where shipment exception management becomes a manual coordination problem.

The hidden work behind a single exception

A carrier emails a dispatcher to report a truck will miss its pickup window. The dispatcher has to work out whether the delay affects the delivery commitment, check the latest shipment details, contact the relevant parties, and make sure the customer gets an accurate update.

That can mean:

Searching an email thread for the original pickup and delivery commitments.
Checking the transportation system for the latest status.
Contacting the carrier to clarify the revised timing.
Deciding whether the customer or receiving location needs to be notified.
Coordinating a revised plan with the right people.
Following up to confirm the issue is actually resolved.

One exception can trigger several conversations, system checks, and follow-up tasks. Multiply that across a busy operation and the challenge is clear: the team isn't simply moving freight, it's continuously reconstructing the current state of work from fragmented information.

The cost isn't just time spent reading emails. It's the risk that a changed commitment goes unnoticed, an update arrives too late, or an unresolved issue disappears into someone's inbox.

Why another dashboard may not solve it

Logistics companies have invested in systems for load management, visibility, carrier communication, and documentation. Those systems are essential to running the operation.

But visibility into a shipment doesn't automatically coordinate the work required to resolve an exception. A tracking system may show a shipment is delayed. An email may explain why. A spreadsheet may hold a customer commitment. A dispatcher may know that a particular delivery needs extra coordination.

The information exists, but it isn't connected in a way that answers the operational questions:

What changed?
Which commitments are now at risk?
What still needs to happen?
Who needs to act?
Has the issue been resolved, or is someone still waiting?

Employees become the integration layer between systems, communications, and decisions. Adding another standalone application can simply create one more place to check and one more workflow people have to remember to maintain.

The better opportunity is to reduce the coordination burden inside the workflow people already use.

How LevelOneAI helps keep exceptions moving

LevelOneAI adds an Operations Workbench alongside existing systems. Rather than replacing the transportation platform or asking dispatchers to abandon email, it connects the information needed to move work forward.

1. Bring the relevant shipment context together

When an exception arrives, LevelOneAI can associate the communication with the relevant shipment and pull together the available context: the reported change, the previous commitment, the current status, and the outstanding questions. Instead of reconstructing the situation by hand from multiple sources, the dispatcher gets a clearer picture of what happened and what matters.

2. Surface the next action, not just the latest update

A delayed pickup is a status change. Resolving it requires action. LevelOneAI can help identify the next steps: confirm the revised pickup time, assess whether the delivery commitment is affected, notify the right person, or get missing information from the carrier. It can also distinguish an issue that needs immediate attention from one that is waiting on a response.

The objective isn't more alerts. It's making unresolved work easier to see and act on.

3. Keep follow-ups from disappearing into email

An exception isn't resolved just because someone sent a message. The carrier may still need to confirm a revised time. The customer may be waiting for an update. An internal decision may still be outstanding.

LevelOneAI can organize these outstanding commitments into a work queue, so the team can see what is waiting, what has changed, and what needs attention next. Where the necessary integrations and permissions are available, the workflow can be extended to update or coordinate information across systems. Important operational decisions remain subject to the company's existing controls.

Keep the systems. Reduce the manual coordination.

The goal isn't to replace a transportation management system, rebuild a carrier portal, or introduce another platform every dispatcher must learn from scratch. It's to make the existing operation work better.

Dispatchers keep using familiar tools and established processes. LevelOneAI reduces the manual effort required to gather context, identify exceptions, determine next steps, and track follow-through.

The result to aim for is straightforward: less time chasing information, fewer unresolved commitments slipping through the cracks, and more time for the shipments that genuinely need human attention.

The actual improvement depends on exception volume, data access, workflow design, and how much coordination is currently done manually. Measure it against a baseline rather than assuming it.

Start with one exception workflow

A practical starting point is one recurring shipment exception, such as a missed pickup window or a delivery appointment change.

Map how it's handled today. Identify where employees search for information, which systems they check, how many handoffs are involved, and where follow-ups tend to stall. Then determine how much of that coordination can be simplified while preserving the team's existing systems, decision rights, and operational controls.

You don't need to redesign the entire logistics operation to make progress. You need to find where work gets stuck and make it easier to move forward.

LevelOneAI helps logistics teams fix the work that falls between their existing systems, so when a shipment goes off track, the next action doesn't depend on someone remembering every detail and chasing every person.

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