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How we work
How We Work: From AI Roadmap to AI Employees
Two methods, one belief: AI succeeds on people, not technology. The ALIGN framework builds your AI roadmap. Six steps take an AI employee from first workflow to digital workforce. Change management runs through both.
Building your AI roadmap
The ALIGN framework
Assess, Lead, Identify, Guide and Navigate. Five steps that take you from “we know we need AI” to a 12-month roadmap with owners, budgets and measures, in 2–3 weeks.
Putting AI to work
Six steps for AI employees
Discover, design, build, pilot, measure and scale. One workflow, one team, one measurable outcome, then the next. The six steps are below.
Change management runs through both. Training, communication and adoption tracking are part of every step, not a final phase.
AI employees
Six steps from first workflow to digital workforce
01 · 1–2 days
Discover
We map how the work really happens, find the repetitive high-volume tasks and score each candidate on ROI, risk, data readiness and integration effort.
02 · Week 1
Design the first AI employee
One workflow, one team, one measurable outcome. We write its job description, escalation rules and guardrails.
03 · Weeks 2–4
Build & integrate
Custom code that reads and updates your CRM, ERP, email, SharePoint or internal systems. Approvals, audit log and override built in.
04 · Weeks 4–8
Pilot with real work
The agent works beside your team on live work. We compare it against the manual baseline every week.
05 · End of pilot
Measure ROI
Hours saved, volume handled, error rate and capacity gained, in a report your CFO will read.
06 · Ongoing
Scale the workforce
Move proven tasks to autonomous, add skills, then the next workflow and the next team.
Principles
What makes this different from a typical AI consultancy
1
Start with the work
We map the workflow before we talk about models. Most AI projects fail because they start with the tool.
2
One agent, one outcome
Small enough to ship in weeks, measurable enough to prove the return.
3
Human in the loop from day one
Approvals, audit trails and override are part of the design, not phase two.
4
Fixed scope, fixed price
Clear proposals and change orders. No open-ended consulting hours.
5
Priced against the work
We compare the cost to the person-hours the agent returns, not to a day rate.
6
We build what we sell
Merlo AI runs in production, and our own sales pipeline is the next AI employee we’re putting to work.
Start with a free 30-minute AI Quick Scan
Bring one workflow your team spends too long chasing. We’ll tell you whether an AI employee can own it, what it would take and what it could return.