Measure the work before you automate it
The best AI pilot starts with a baseline your engineers and operators can both understand.
The field note
A model benchmark is not a measurement of your business process. Before changing a workflow, observe representative cases from intake to completion. Include waiting, checking, rework, and escalation in the baseline.
Define what a useful result means in terms an operator can judge. A support draft might need correct account context and an actionable next step; an extracted invoice might need exact amounts and a traceable source. Score those separately.
Run a limited pilot against that baseline. Keep difficult examples in the evaluation set and record when a person intervenes. Compare like-for-like cases instead of treating every completed automated run as time saved.