A Practice of Charis Applied Intelligence

Applied Intelligence,
operationalized.

We embed AI into the working layer of firms — the intake, the intelligence, the reporting — without disrupting the people who run them. Built for institutions that prize judgment over novelty.

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Veritas · Disciplina · Compositum
01The Premise

Most firms do not need more AI. They need fewer points of friction.

The market is saturated with tools that promise transformation and deliver demos. Applied Intelligence Automation begins from the opposite posture: identify the three workflows that consume the most senior time, and automate only those — with discipline, with documentation, and with a clear handover to the people who own the work afterward.

02The Practice

Four working surfaces.

i.

Intake

Inbound forms, emails, and documents arrive structured, scored, and routed before a person reads them.

  • Lead qualification & enrichment
  • Document classification & summary
  • Triage routing into CRM, Drive, or inbox
  • Auto-drafted first-touch responses
ii.

Operations

The recurring back-office work that does not need a human in the loop — until it does.

  • Vendor invoice & receipt processing
  • Calendar, scheduling & meeting prep
  • Internal SOPs codified into agents
  • Cross-tool data reconciliation
iii.

Intelligence

Memo-grade outputs from messy inputs. Built to your firm's voice, not a generic LLM tone.

  • Diligence memos from PDFs & decks
  • Counter-thesis generation
  • Competitive & market scans
  • Custom briefing packets
iv.

Reporting

The recurring reports that consume hours and read the same way every cycle — drafted, never sent unreviewed.

  • Weekly & monthly partner updates
  • Client-facing performance summaries
  • Internal dashboards with narrative
  • Regulatory & compliance prep
03Engagements

Three ways to begin.

Every engagement is fixed-scope. We do not bill for hours. We bill for the working system at the end of it.

Tier I

Diagnostic

From $12,000 · 2 weeks

A structured audit of where AI fits — and, more importantly, where it does not — across your firm's current operations.

  • Workflow inventory across teams
  • Three prioritized automation candidates
  • Build estimate, ROI thesis, sequencing plan
  • 40-page diagnostic memo, delivered
  • Two strategy sessions with the founder
Begin Diagnostic →
Tier II · Most Common

Build

From $48,000 · 6–10 weeks

Three production automations, built end-to-end, integrated with your stack, documented for handover.

  • Three automations across our four surfaces
  • Integration with your CRM, email, Drive
  • SOPs & training for your team
  • 30-day post-launch support
  • Source code & architecture, fully owned by you
Begin Build →
Tier III

Embed

From $9,500/mo · 6 months min.

A standing engagement. We hold the AI surface area of your firm — building, maintaining, and evolving it as your operations change.

  • Continuous build pipeline (1–2 ships/month)
  • Monitoring, maintenance, model updates
  • Quarterly strategy & roadmap reviews
  • Direct access to the principal
  • Right of first refusal on new automations
Begin Embed →
04Method

Three principles. Always in this order.

The Charis maxim is not a tagline. It is the order of operations on every engagement we accept.

Veritas.
Truth

What is actually happening?

Before any tool is selected, we map the work as it is — not as it is described in the SOP, not as the founder remembers it. AI built on a misdiagnosed workflow is worse than no AI at all.

Disciplina.
Discipline

What is worth automating?

Most candidates fail this test. We automate only work that is repetitive, well-defined, and high-leverage — and we have the discipline to tell you when an engagement should be smaller than you proposed.

Compositum.
Composition

How does it fit?

An automation is not a feature; it is a member of an operating system. We compose the work into your stack, your team's rhythm, and your firm's voice — then document it so we can leave.

The Capacity Gap

The work is automatable.
The capacity is not yet captured.

Every figure below is sourced from independent research. We do not claim to have produced these outcomes; we are the practice that captures them, one engagement at a time.

0%
of US work hours are technically automatable today
McKinsey Global Institute, Nov 2025
$0T
in annual US economic value at stake by 2030 if firms redesign work around AI
McKinsey, “Agents, Robots, and Us” 2025
$0B
in annual US healthcare administrative waste — addressable through automation
McKinsey · Health Affairs
Capacity is being created daily. Most of it is not yet being captured.
05By Industry

Where the hours bleed.

Five industries with the largest documented gap between current operational load and current automation deployment. Each card identifies the workflows that consume time, the published data on hours lost, and the modeled annualized capacity if Charis-grade automation were applied.

i. Real Estate

The agent who works two jobs.

10+ hrs/wk
per agent on non-revenue work — paperwork, scheduling, follow-ups, listings, compliance
Manual
Listing copy drafted manually · CMA reports built cell-by-cell · Lead follow-ups typed individually · Showing schedules coordinated by SMS
Composed
Listings auto-drafted in agent voice from MLS data · CMAs generated from comparables in 90 seconds · First-touch follow-ups sent the moment a lead arrives · Showings booked through a single calendar surface
Annualized capacity returned per agent
~520 hrs
Equivalent dollar value at $150/hr
~$78,000/yr
Charis Build engagement payback
~7 months
Sources: VertuAgent industry survey 2025; NAR Member Profile 2024
ii. Healthcare Practices

The physician who types instead of treats.

15–20 hrs/wk
per physician on documentation, prior authorizations, EHR interactions, and billing — roughly equal to direct patient care time
Manual
Visit notes typed after hours · Prior auth letters drafted from scratch · Coding queries researched per case · Patient communications written individually
Composed
Visit notes drafted from ambient transcripts and reviewed in 2 minutes · Prior auth letters auto-composed against payer requirements · Coding queries resolved by a domain-trained agent · Patient comms templated and personalized at send
Annualized capacity per physician
~600 hrs
Industry-wide US administrative waste
$265 B/yr
Documented PA cost per physician/yr
~$68,000
Sources: AMA Physician Survey; Medical Economics 2025; arXiv 2025 (PA letter automation study); McKinsey Healthcare Admin report
iii. Professional Services (Law, Finance, Consulting)

The senior who edits drafts past midnight.

14 hrs/wk
on average lost per senior to drafting, document review, intake processing, and recurring client reporting
Manual
Engagement letters drafted from templates and edited per matter · Inbound RFPs reviewed by partners · Client status reports written each month from scratch · Document review billed in fractional hours
Composed
Engagement letters drafted in firm voice in under 2 minutes · RFPs scored, summarized, and matched to capacity before partner review · Status reports drafted from CRM and timesheet data · First-pass document review handled by a domain-trained agent
Annualized senior capacity returned
~720 hrs
Equivalent value at $400/hr senior rate
~$288,000/yr
Charis Build engagement payback
~9 weeks
Sources: Thomson Reuters Legal Department Operations Survey; Salesforce State of Sales 2024; HubSpot AI Productivity report
iv. Sales & Marketing Teams

The pipeline that runs on copy-paste.

11 hrs/wk
average time saved per rep when AI is properly composed into the workflow — not bolted on as a tool
Manual
Lead research done one company at a time · Outbound sequences typed manually · Meeting recaps written after every call · Weekly pipeline reports compiled by hand
Composed
Lead briefs auto-generated from public + CRM data · Outbound personalized at scale in firm voice · Meeting recaps drafted from transcript with action items · Pipeline reports written each Monday before standup
Capacity per rep per year
~570 hrs
Across a 10-person team
~5,700 hrs
Equivalent fully-loaded headcount
~2.7 reps
Sources: HubSpot State of AI in Sales 2024; Salesforce Marketing AI Productivity Survey
v. Mid-Market Operations & Finance

The close that takes a week, every month.

45% of close cycle
spent on invoice matching, reconciliation, and exception handling — work that AI is provably better at than humans
Manual
Invoices matched to POs by a human reviewer · Vendor exceptions resolved through email chains · Monthly board pack assembled across six tools · Variance commentary written from scratch
Composed
87% of invoices matched automatically; exceptions routed with the specific issue flagged · Vendor follow-ups auto-sent and tracked · Board pack drafted from source-of-truth data · Variance commentary first-drafted, partner-edited
Close cycle reduction
~3 days/mo
Annualized hours returned (3-person team)
~1,100 hrs
Charis Build payback
~5 months
Sources: AFP Benchmarking Survey; Deloitte CFO Signals 2025
Methodology note. All figures above are drawn from cited third-party research. Modeled annualized impacts assume Charis Build engagement at the firm level; actual results vary by team size, current process maturity, and adoption rigor. We commit to documenting and publishing real engagement outcomes here as client confidentiality permits.
06Questions

Before you engage.

Why hire Charis instead of an in-house engineer or a freelancer?

An engineer builds what you specify. A freelancer builds what you describe. We are paid first to determine what is actually worth building — then to build it with the rigor of a firm that signs its name to the deliverable. The diagnostic phase exists precisely because most automation projects fail at scoping, not execution.

What technology stack do you build on?

We are model-agnostic and tool-agnostic. Engagements are typically composed from Anthropic Claude, OpenAI, Google Workspace APIs, n8n or Make for orchestration, and your existing CRM and document infrastructure. We do not lock you into proprietary platforms; every system we build is delivered with full source, documentation, and a clean handover.

How do you protect confidential firm data?

All engagements run under signed mutual NDA before discovery begins. Production systems are deployed inside your tenant — your Workspace, your Drive, your CRM — never ours. We retain no operational copies of client data, and we use enterprise tier APIs with zero-data-retention agreements where the work warrants it.

What if we do not yet know what to automate?

That is the most common starting point and the reason the Diagnostic tier exists. The output is a written memo identifying the three workflows in your firm where AI would generate the highest leverage — including the cases where the answer is "do nothing here." A diagnostic engagement does not obligate a build engagement.

Do you serve smaller firms and solo operators?

Our entry tier begins at $12,000. Below that price point, we direct prospects to Studio — the digital marketing and content practice within Charis Applied Intelligence — or to the productized real estate AI tooling currently in development. The Automation practice is sized for firms where senior time is genuinely the scarce resource.

Engage

Begin with a diligence call.

Forty-five minutes, no agenda required. We will ask three questions about your operations and tell you, plainly, whether an engagement is the right next step. If it is not, we will tell you that too.

Submissions arrive at office@charisappliedintelligence.com. Read personally. Response within 72 hours.

Or write directly: office@charisappliedintelligence.com