Emily & Priya ROI

The answer

Year-one return at a glance

$0Annual value at full run rate

$21,600Annual subscription for both employees ($1,800/mo)

0×Value returned per $1 of subscription

–Payback on the $14,500 build, with adoption ramp

0Hours a year handed back to designers and the field

Hard cash and freed hours are shown separately below. Freed hours become dollars only when AF&V puts them to work: fewer overflow invoices, no new designer hire as you grow, and managers spending the time on their accounts.

Current state vs. future state

A field request, before and after

Today two designers support every account in both companies. A manager who needs an 8.5×11 for tomorrow's seafood boil either waits in the ServiceNow queue or makes something off-brand in ChatGPT.

Before 1–3 business days

Manager writes a ServiceNow ticket, email or Teams message10–20 min
Request waits in the design queue (80% marked urgent)1–3 days
Designer pulls the right logo and photo from the file library15–30 min
Designer builds the piece, then revisions back and forth~1 hr
Overflow goes to the outside vendor~$20K/yr

Or the manager skips the queue and uses ChatGPT, and the account ends up with off-brand signage. The 1–3 day wait is AF&V's figure; the other step times are Arcovo estimates.

After ~3 minutes

Manager opens Emily and picks a format: flyer, signage or ViewSonic slide1 min
Priya pulls approved logos and assets from the brand libraryseconds
Emily generates the piece on brand; manager refines it with a few prompts~3 min
Manager downloads and prints. No ticket.same day
Designers keep custom and strategic workbrand, openings

Brand rules are built in: 64 standardized logos that are never altered, and template areas managers can't change.

50–60design tickets a month in ServiceNow, which is half or less of total requestsPaige Crane, 10/14; Courtney, 3/25

80%of those requests marked urgentPaige Crane, 10/14

1–3 daysfor designers to get a piece back to the managerPaige Crane, 10/14

26,000+brand files organized and retrievable in seconds, so employees can focus on higher-value workFile count: Paige Crane, 10/14

Where the value comes from

Four sources of value

Each line shows its math with the current assumptions. Green is cash AF&V stops spending. Blue is paid time handed back to your people.

Three-year view

Cumulative value against cumulative cost

Starts at go-live in October 2026. Value ramps up as training reaches the rest of dining (target November 6) and higher ed, reaching full run rate in month four. Cost is the $14,500 build plus $1,800 a month.

Cumulative value Cumulative cost to AF&V

Growth, not only savings

Turning same-day marketing into café revenue

You can't take savings to the bank, so this section is about revenue. Emily lets every account run promotions it could not get designed before: the obscure food holiday a client asks for, or a pop-up planned for tomorrow. Each one is a reason for guests to buy.

Illustrative café sales lift

$0

Accounts running Emily promotions 100+ B&I accounts and 100+ cafés (Paige, 3/20; Kaitlyn, 8/18).

Extra promotions per account per month Promotions that would not have happened at 1–3 day turnaround.

Incremental sales per promotion Placeholder. AF&V's café POS data can replace this with a measured number.

Contribution margin on those sales Placeholder for AF&V's food-service margin.

Growth levers that are harder to price

Client experience. Same-day, on-brand material for client events. Quest once needed event signage in four or five hours, and clients ask for obscure food holidays the day before. Managers can now offer that within minutes.
Brand protection in every account. Paige described walking into accounts where nothing was branded because managers used ChatGPT instead. Consistent branding protects the contracts the brand is meant to sell.
A micro-marketer at every account. A single account gets its own on-site marketing help without adding headcount.
Field insight. Monthly review of what managers ask Emily for shows which programs the field is missing.
Designers on growth work. Freed hours go to high-impact and strategic projects such as new account openings, brand development and sales support.

"She is able to create on-brand assets in minutes. And this is where the true value of Emily is."Paige Crane, owner presentation, 10/14

Adjust the model

Assumptions you can change

Every box starts with Arcovo's assumption. Type your own number or drag the slider, and the whole page recalculates. Each note says where the starting number came from.

For the AF&V team Replace any number you know better, such as designer cost, how many requests come in by email and Teams, or how long a manager spends on a ticket. A changed box turns gold and shows Arcovo's original number beside it. When you're done, click "Copy my numbers" and paste the result into an email to Jeff. Your entries stay in this browser if you come back later.

CashOverflow design vendor

Annual overflow vendor spend "Close to $20,000 a year… just for the overflow." Nick Salvagni, 10/14

Share of that spend Emily removes "At a minimum… it will cut that in half." Nick Salvagni, 10/14

CapacityIn-house designers

Design requests per month, all channels 50–60 ServiceNow tickets, with email and Teams adding about as many again.

Share Emily handles without a designer 80% of tickets are one-off urgent pieces such as flyers, signage and slides.

Designer hours per request, including revisions Placeholder: about an hour for a simple flyer or menu, including back-and-forth.

Designer loaded cost per hour Placeholder of about $75K a year loaded. Replace with your actual figure.

CapacityField managers using Emily

Active field users The flat fee covers all 155 expected users.

Pieces per user per month Pilot accounts are "using it on a daily basis"; menu templates are used every day (Paige, 10/14).

Minutes saved per piece Writing a ticket and following up, or rebuilding a ChatGPT draft, compared with a ~3-minute generation.

Field manager loaded cost per hour Placeholder. Replace with your average manager cost.

CapacityBrand asset search with Priya

Asset searches per user per month The same users. Priya also feeds every asset Emily uses.

Minutes saved per search Streamlined file organization and retrieval frees time for higher-value work.

Early results

What the first weeks show

These are numbers from the live usage dashboard shown to ownership on October 14, before training reached most of the field. From here we report them monthly so the model runs on measured numbers instead of estimates.

10high-request accounts trained by 10/12, including Sherwin-Williams

45Emily requests in the first days, about 4.4 prompts each

17Priya searches across 10 signed-in users

~3 minper generated piece, compared with 1–3 business days

"Three minutes is a far cry from submitting a ticket."Nick Salvagni, weekly review, 10/19

Current state to future state

From one department pilot to an AI workforce

Ownership described this build as a pilot for other departments. Here is the path from what is live now.

NOW · OCT 2026

Live with first accounts

Emily and Priya live since 10/16
10 high-request accounts trained
Marketing team on Priya

NOV 6, 2026

Dining rollout

Most dining managers trained
Higher ed trained, with school-branded templates
RVP district calls; SSO opened to the field

Q1–Q2 2027

All 155 users, AF&V and ADC

Same flat $1,800/mo at full adoption
Monthly ROI report from live usage
Refine Emily for six months, as Nick recommends

2027+

Next departments

Sales and proposal support
Finance and operations use cases

Nick's rule of thumb for the next departments: an agent costs "about a tenth" of hiring for the role.

Validation

How we prove it over the next 90 days

Josh asked for numbers that can be validated. Each assumption above maps to something we can measure.

Assumption	Measured by	Source	Owner
Overflow vendor spend falls	Monthly overflow invoices compared with the 2025 average	AF&V accounts payable	Nick / finance
Design requests shift to Emily	ServiceNow design tickets per month, before and after	ServiceNow export	Paige
Field adoption	Active users, generations, downloads, edits per download	Emily usage dashboard	Arcovo
Asset search time	Priya searches and downloads per user	Priya usage dashboard	Arcovo
Brand consistency	Spot audit of signage at 10 accounts, now and in 90 days	Field visits	Marketing
Growth	Promotions run, and café sales during promo weeks against baseline weeks	POS and Emily logs	Operations