Resource
😎 The MOPs AI Tooling ROI Matrix
5/25/2026
A self-serve tool for figuring out which AI workflows are worth building for your stack.
Start here
If you read the newsletter edition this came from, you saw the five AI workflows I run every week. People always ask me to send the list so they can copy it. I get the instinct, but copying my stack is the wrong move. My five highest-ROI workflows are a function of my company, my team size, my tools, and the specific parts of my week that were eating me alive.
So instead of handing you my answers, this guide hands you the way I decide. It's the same back-of-the-napkin scoring I run before I build anything, turned into something you can fill in yourself.
By the end, you'll have a ranked shortlist of AI workflows worth building, sorted by what gives you the most return for the least effort, plus a clear sense of what to ignore for now.
The three things that predict ROI
I score every candidate workflow on three key dimensions.
1. Frequency / time saved. How often does this task happen, and how much of your time does it eat each time? A painful task you do once a quarter is a worse automation target than a small annoyance you hit every single morning.
2. Revenue or pipeline impact. Does getting this right or wrong impact revenue? Some ops work is pure internal hygiene -- useful, but less clearly measurable to the business. Other work sits directly on the path to pipeline and the revenue numbers leadership watches.
3. Ease of build. How hard is this to stand up and maintain? A workflow that takes an hour to build and runs itself is worth more, per unit of effort, than one that takes three weeks and breaks every time a field changes. This is the dimension people skip, and it's why so many automation projects die half-finished.
How to score
Rate each candidate workflow 1 to 5 on each dimension.
For Frequency and Revenue impact, higher is better. A 5 means "happens constantly" or "directly drives revenue."
For Ease of build, higher also means easier. A 5 means "I could stand this up in an afternoon," a 1 means "this is a quarter-long project with ongoing maintenance."
Add the three scores for a total out of 15.
12-15 -- Build now.
8-11 -- Soon.
Below 8 -- Park it.
⚠️ If a workflow touches anything customer-facing or revenue-critical and would act without a human checking it, drop its priority until you've designed the human review step.
Pre-scored examples
Here's the model run against common MOPs use cases, so you can see how the scoring feels before you do your own. These scores are illustrative.
Workflow | Frequency | Revenue impact | Ease of build | Total | Verdict |
Meeting notes to CRM updates | 5 | 3 | 5 | 13 | 🟢 Build now |
Lead routing QA / catch misrouted leads | 4 | 5 | 4 | 13 | 🟢 Build now |
Draft first-pass campaign briefs | 4 | 3 | 5 | 12 | 🟢 Build now |
Account research for target list | 3 | 4 | 4 | 11 | 🟡 Soon |
Churn-risk flag from call language | 3 | 5 | 2 | 10 | 🟡 Soon (high value, harder build) |
Quarterly board deck data pull | 1 | 4 | 3 | 8 | 🟡 Soon |
Full inbound lead scoring rebuild | 2 | 5 | 1 | 8 | ⚪ Park (huge build) |
Auto-reply to inbound emails, unsupervised | 4 | 4 | 4 | 12 | ⚪ Park (fails the review rule) |
Look at the last two rows. The lead scoring rebuild scores high on impact but is a massive build, so it sits until you have the runway. The unsupervised auto-reply scores 12 on the raw math, which would normally mean build now. But it acts on customers without a human in the loop, so the override rule pushes it to park until you've designed the review step.
My own stack, scored honestly
Notice that the workflow people ask me about most -- the RevOps bot -- has the hardest build of the five. It's a high-value tool, but the ease-of-build score is a 2, which means for most people it belongs in the "build carefully, later" pile, not at the starting block. The one I'd tell you to copy first is the least glamorous one: voice and call notes flowing into Notion.
My workflow | What it does | Frequency | Revenue impact | Ease of build | Total | Verdict |
Wispr / Fathom to Claude to Notion | Voice and call notes become structured Notion docs | 5 | 3 | 5 | 13 | 🟢 Build now |
Claude Skills for repeatable tasks | Reusable procedures for forecasts, HubSpot data, client status reports | 5 | 4 | 3 | 12 | 🟢 Build now |
Clay functions + Claude | Pull a pre-built Clay enrichment flow into a Claude chat | 3 | 5 | 3 | 11 | 🟡 Soon |
Meeting prep | Claude pulls Slack + last meeting context into a pre-call brief | 4 | 3 | 4 | 11 | 🟡 Soon |
Claude HubSpot Analyzer | Claude evaluates exported HubSpot data and recommends fixes | 3 | 4 | 4 | 11 | 🟡 Soon |
The RevOps bot (Claude Code + Notion + Slack) | Bot with docs + HubSpot read access answers stakeholder Q&A | 4 | 4 | 1 | 9 | 🟡 Soon (hard build, in testing — will have to side-hustle until it’s ready) |
Don't take the lesson from just my scores, though — take it from the gap between which of my workflows sound impressive and which ones would be smart for you to build first. The matrix is how you tell those two apart.
The quadrant
Once you've scored your candidates, plot them on a simple grid. Combine Frequency and Revenue impact into one "value" axis (add those two scores, out of 10) and use Ease of build as the other axis.
Build now -- high value, easy: your shortlist, and where you start. These earn their keep immediately and won't drain your month.
Quick wins -- low value, easy: do these between meetings. They won't change your quarter, but they're cheap and they build your AI-building muscle.
Build carefully -- high value, hard: the real prizes. They need planning, budget, or a teammate. Earn the right to tackle these by shipping a few quick wins first.
Skip or park -- low value, hard: leave them. The most common mistake in AI adoption is starting here because the use case sounds impressive in a planning meeting.
Your blank scorer
Duplicate this table and fill in your own candidate workflows. Aim for 6 to 10 candidates, enough to force real prioritization without giving yourself a list you never finish.
Workflow | Frequency (1-5) | Revenue impact (1-5) | Ease of build (1-5) | Total (/15) | Customer-facing? | Verdict |
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⚠️ Don't skip the Customer-facing column. Mark each row yes or no. Any yes is your reminder to design the human review step before you build, no matter how high the total.
How to use your results
Take your top one or two "build now" workflows and start there. Not your top five. One workflow built well and actually running beats five half-built ones you abandoned when the quarter got busy.
Once your first build is live and you trust it, come back to this table and pick the next one.
Rescore quarterly. This is a living doc; your stack changes, your tools add new AI features, and a workflow that was a hard build last quarter might be a quick win once your platform ships native support for it.
A note on picking the tool
This guide doesn't tell you which tool to build in because the right tool depends on…well, on what you specifically use at your job.
Rough rule: If the data and the action both already live inside one platform, use that platform's native AI before reaching for anything else. If the workflow spans tools -- pulling from a call recorder, reasoning over it, and writing somewhere else -- that's where a connective layer or a model with the right integrations might be worth the extra effort.
Pick the use case with this matrix first. Let the use case tell you what tool it needs. Building it the other way around, grabbing a shiny tool and hunting for something to do with it, is how stacks get bloated and budgets get questioned. But you already know that, you’re in ops. 😅
Build something good with this? Hit reply on the newsletter and tell me what made your shortlist. I'm always curious what's eating other people's weeks.
- Sara
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