How do I prepare an AI ROI report for the board?

Goal: Walk into a board meeting with a one-page PDF showing AI spend, cost per business outcome, efficiency trend, and net savings — with an AI-written narrative so you're not assembling slides the night before.

Prerequisites: At least 30 days of AI calls through Cognocient. Outcome tracking set up for at least one key metric (see Step 1).

Step 1 — Define your outcome metric

Go to Executive → Outcomes → Define Outcome. Pick the metric that makes AI spend feel like an investment rather than a cost — name it, choose Correlation Method (By Session or By User), and set the correlation Window (minutes):

Once the outcome is defined, push events from your application whenever the outcome actually occurs:

import httpx
 
def mark_ticket_resolved(ticket_id: str, session_id: str):
    httpx.post(
        "https://api.cognocient.com/api/outcomes/events",
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {COG_API_KEY}"},
        json={
            "outcome_name": "Support ticket resolved",  # must match the defined outcome
            "correlation_key": session_id,
            "metadata": {"ticket_id": ticket_id},
        }
    )

Step 2 — Let the data accumulate

Once outcome tracking is in place, click into the outcome on Executive → Outcomes to see:

• Avg Cost per Outcome — e.g., $0.42 per ticket resolved
• Total Outcomes — e.g., 28,500 tickets
• Total AI Investment — total spend matched to those events

There's no "AI efficiency vs. alternative" benchmark field here — if you want the human-cost comparison, track that number yourself and bring it into the narrative as context. You don't need to do anything else during this period; the metrics update as events come in.

Step 3 — Open the Executive View before your meeting

Go to Executive View. This is the CFO-facing dashboard. Check:

If any numbers look off — a big spend spike, an efficiency trend reversing — investigate before the meeting, not during it.

Step 4 — Choose your narrative tone

Go to Reports and click into the Generate Report tab. Pick a narrative tone:

Choose Board / CFO for board meetings. The AI generates a short narrative (150–200 words) summarising your AI investment, efficiency trend, and outlook — written in plain business language.

Step 5 — Download and review the PDF

Download the AI ROI Summary PDF for the selected month. It includes the AI-written narrative alongside your spend, cost-per-outcome, and waste-recovered figures.

Review the narrative for accuracy. The AI writes from your data but you know the context (a Q4 push, a new product launch) that explains any unusual numbers.

Step 6 — Set up monthly auto-delivery

After your first successful board report, automate it. Go to Reports → Scheduled Delivery and configure:

There's no custom day-of-month picker — Monthly delivery goes out on the 1st. Toggle Require approval before sending if you want a named approver to review it before it reaches recipients.

What a good ROI story looks like

A strong AI ROI narrative has three numbers:

1. What you spent — "$47,000 on AI this quarter"
2. What you got — "85,000 support tickets resolved at $0.55 each"
3. What the alternative costs — "Our human agents cost $8.40 per ticket — AI is 15× more cost-efficient"

If you can answer "what would this have cost without AI?", you have a compelling investment case. If you can't answer that yet, defining a benchmark cost in Outcomes is the fastest path to having that number for next quarter's meeting.