AI employees for operations teams
Hire AI employees. Grow output without growing headcount.
We design, build and run AI employees that do real jobs inside your business: reading the work, chasing people, collecting what’s missing, updating your CRM, ERP and internal systems, and escalating when a human is needed. Discovery first, your first agent in weeks, then a digital workforce.
Free 45-minute call · No slide deck, no obligation · Melbourne and Colombo delivery
MC
Maintenance Coordinator
AI employee · property operations
Working
- ›Read 42 open work orders and 17 new contractor emails
- ›Chased 6 contractors for overdue quotes
- ✓Collected 3 invoices and filed them against the right jobs
- ›Asked 4 contractors for status on jobs older than 14 days
- ✓Updated 11 job records with new ETAs and added notes
- !Escalated a roof leak to the property manager with full history
Illustrative morning, modelled on the maintenance agent we run inside Merlo AI.
25+ yrsbuilding and changing technology in real businesses
301K+strata lots supported by our Merlo AI employees
4–8 wksto pilot your first AI employee on real work
1 agentone workflow, one team, one measurable outcome to start
The problem
Your best people are stuck chasing.
Every operations team has a job nobody hired for: following up, reminding, collecting and updating. It’s repetitive, it’s high volume and it quietly eats the week.
That work doesn’t need more people. It needs an employee that never forgets to follow up, works every item the same way and hands the hard calls to your team.
What is an AI employee?Sound familiar?
Chasing renewal documentsFollowing up quotesCollecting invoicesRequesting status updatesNudging unsigned formsFollowing up new leadsChasing KYC documentsUpdating the CRM after every email
How an AI employee works
One pattern. Proven in production.
An AI employee owns a repetitive workflow end to end. It follows the same six steps our agents run every day in Merlo AI.
01Read the workEmails, orders, leads and documents, plus the records in your CRM, ERP and internal systems.
02Decide the next actionWorks out what each item needs and who owes what.
03Chase and follow upSends the reminder, the nudge, the second nudge. On schedule.
04Collect what it needsQuotes, invoices, forms and status updates, attached and filed.
05Update your systemsCreates and updates records, adds notes and logs every touch, so the system stays the source of truth.
06Escalate to a humanWhen it’s stuck, or when judgement is needed. With the full history.
System access
It works in your systems, not beside them
An AI employee doesn’t hand your team another screen to check. It logs in where the work already lives, reads what it needs, and writes back what it did.
CRMs: Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics 365ERPs and finance systemsEmail, Outlook and TeamsSharePoint and document storesIndustry platformsInternal databases and in-house apps
If it has an API, a database or a shared inbox, an agent can usually work with it. Write access is granted step by step, with approvals until each action has earned trust.
ReadPulls records, history and status before it acts
CreateNew contacts, cases, jobs, orders or tasks
UpdateFields, statuses, stages, dates and owners
NoteAdds notes and activity so everyone can see what happened
AttachFiles documents and evidence against the right record
LogKeeps an audit trail of every read, write and message
What we do
Start small. Prove the return. Then scale.
Three steps from a first conversation to a digital workforce. Each one pays for itself before you commit to the next.
Step 1
AI Workforce Discovery
$1k–3k fixed fee
A 1–2 day workshop. We map the work, score every AI employee candidate and hand you a 90-day roadmap and a business case for the first agent.
- Process map of the target workflow
- Scored list of AI employee candidates
- First-agent business case and fixed-price proposal
Step 2
Custom AI Agent build
$10k–50k fixed scope, fixed price
We build one named AI employee, connect it to your systems and pilot it on real work for 4–8 weeks.
- Reads and updates your CRM, ERP and internal systems
- Approvals, audit log and human override
- Pilot with real work and real numbers
Step 3
Managed AI Employees
$2k–10k per month
We run, monitor and improve your AI employees, add new skills and report the numbers every month.
- Monitoring and continuous improvement
- New skills and workflows added
- Monthly report: hours saved, volume, error rate
All prices in AUD. Priced against the cost of the work the agent takes on, not hours of consulting.
Need the plumbing too? AI process automation, built in custom code, with no middleware.
Industries
Built for industries that run on follow-ups.
The knowledge transfers from one admin-heavy industry to the next. So does the pattern.
Insurance →Renewal chasing, claims documents, policy adminFinancial services →KYC collection, onboarding and compliance follow-upsCPG & consumer goods →Trade promotion admin, supplier and demand data chasingProfessional services →Proposal follow-ups, client check-ins, invoice chasingProperty & strata →Work orders, contractor quotes, maintenance. Our proof: Merlo AI
How it works
From first call to first AI employee in weeks.
Step 01
Discover
We map how the work really happens and score every candidate on ROI, risk, data readiness and integration effort.
Step 02
Design
We write the agent’s job description: what it owns, what it escalates and which systems it touches.
Step 03
Build & pilot
We build it on your systems and run it on real work, with approvals and a human override from day one.
Step 04
Scale
We measure hours saved and volume handled, then add the next skill, workflow or team.
Proof, in production
Merlo AI: AI employees running a real industry, every day
We built Merlo AI for strata and body corporate management, one of the most admin-heavy industries in Australia. Its AI employees handle the inbox, insurance renewals, compliance, AGMs and Teams assistance, supporting more than 300,000 strata lots across Australia.
The flagship is a maintenance work-order agent. It reads every work order, note and maintenance record, then acts like a coordinator who never forgets: following up open orders, chasing subcontractors for quotes, asking for invoices and requesting status updates.
The same pattern works anywhere someone spends their day chasing, following up and collecting information.
What Merlo’s AI employees own
- Email triage and repliesReads, sorts and drafts responses across shared inboxes
- Maintenance work ordersChases quotes, invoices and status from subcontractors
- Insurance renewalsTracks renewal dates and collects what brokers need
- ComplianceFollows up fire safety and compliance obligations
- AGMsKeeps AGM preparation on track
- Teams assistantAnswers staff questions where they already work
Do the maths
Put a number on the chasing.
Most teams underestimate how much of the week goes on follow-ups. Here’s a quick way to size it.
What is manual chasing costing you?
Move the sliders to match one workflow in your business.
Capacity you get back
1,152 hrs
per year, returned to your team
Cost of that work today$63,360
Full-time equivalent0.7 FTE
An estimate to frame the conversation, not a quote. Discovery replaces these assumptions with your real numbers. Assumes 48 working weeks and 1,650 hours per FTE a year.
Why DAS CX
I’ve created digital transformation strategies, and I’ve executed them from planning to delivery. Most AI consultants have done neither.
Dasun PremadasaFounder, DAS CX · 13 years building software, 12 years as a business analyst
Developer → tech leadBusiness analystTreasury Wine EstatesClub BasisBuilt Merlo AI
Questions operations leaders ask
What is an AI employee?
An AI agent that owns a repetitive, high-volume workflow end to end. It reads the work, decides the next action, chases and follows up, collects what it needs and escalates to a person when it’s stuck or judgement is required.
How is this different from a chatbot?
A chatbot waits for someone to ask it a question. An AI employee has a job: it works through a queue of real tasks inside your email, CRM, ERP and internal systems, on a schedule. It reads, creates and updates records as it goes, adds notes, and reports what it did.
Will it replace my team?
It takes the chasing off your team so they can do the work that needs judgement. Most clients use it to grow volume without hiring, not to cut staff.
How long until we see results?
Discovery takes 1–2 days. A first agent is usually built and piloting on real work within 4–8 weeks, with hours saved and volume handled measured from the first week.
What does it cost?
Discovery is a fixed fee of $1,000–$3,000. A single agent build is $10,000–$50,000, fixed scope and fixed price. Managed AI employees run $2,000–$10,000 a month. All AUD.
Find your first AI employee in 45 minutes
Bring one workflow your team spends too long chasing. We’ll tell you honestly whether an AI employee can own it, what it would take and what it could return.