AI CostGuard

Value Assurance · for management & the board

Does your AI pay off — and can you prove it to the board?

Over 70% of AI investments barely reach break-even, according to Gartner, and more than one in three agent projects will be cancelled by 2027 — usually because cost and value were never cleanly calculated. The AI Portfolio Review ends the guesswork: a solid decision brief on which AI initiative carries its weight — and which doesn't.

The outcome

A portfolio map instead of a collection of experiments

Each of your AI initiatives — plotted by value and full cost, with a clear recommendation.

Scale
high value · low cost
Support botDocument AI
Optimize
high value · high cost
Knowledge search (RAG)
Assess
value unclear · low cost
Autocomplete
Stop / review
low value · high cost
Experimental agent

↑ Higher value / ROI  ·  higher cost / TCO →

Value per outcome

Cost per ticket, document, lead — instead of an abstract cloud bill. So you see which AI is worth its price.

TCO per use case

Full cost per use case including the hidden overhead — the honest basis for any ROI calculation.

Stop / Scale / Start

A prioritized recommendation with a €-impact: what to stop, what to scale, what to start.

View a full example deliverable →

Why us

We model AI unit economics — not just PowerPoint

Most AI consultants explain technology. We model the numbers a CFO decides on. For our own AI product we costed the full cost down to the minute, modelled every cost layer separately and tested it across several scenarios. Anyone selling AI FinOps has to be able to calculate like this. Few can.

€0.028
validated full cost per minute, to the cent
4 layers
telephony · STT · TTS · LLM — modelled separately
11 providers
compared on cost and quality
4 scenarios
COGS sensitivity × utilisation

How it works

From kickoff to decision brief in three to four weeks

Inventory. We capture all running and planned AI initiatives — usage, provider, purpose, owners.
Calculate. Full cost (TCO) per use case, value per business outcome, ROI — GDPR-compliant, on your real data.
Map. Portfolio matrix, value/feasibility scoring, stop/scale/start recommendation with a €-impact.
Present. Executive one-pager plus deep-dive — a brief that holds up in the boardroom. Implementation optional.

Bring clarity to your AI portfolio.

A 30-minute call is enough to define scope and goals.

Request a portfolio review
AI CostGuard — a service by IT Consulting Franz Bauer · Confidential · Figures from our own product costing