Business AI, sorted by workflow
Choose AI tools for the business workflow they need to support
Business AI tools should be chosen for the workflow around the model as well as the model itself. A general workspace may cover drafting and analysis, while a specialist system may still be needed for customer records, approvals or live support. Use this guide to decide what to replace, complement or retain.
Three answers per workflow
- Replace
Drafting, summarizing and analysis work that lives in documents and chats, where a general AI workspace covers the job.
- Complement
The specialist system stays, and the AI workspace speeds up the work around it.
- Retain
Systems of record, approvals and live customer channels. Keep them, and use AI inside or beside them.
Start with a workflow, owner and constraint
Before any vendor comes up, write down six things. If you cannot fill one in, that gap is the first thing to fix, and no tool will fix it for you.
Owner
A named person who reviews the output and is accountable when it is wrong. With no owner it is not a pilot, it is a habit.
Output
What exactly gets produced: a draft, a summary, a figure or a decision. Define it before comparing vendors.
System of record
Where the data lives and where the result has to end up. Most replace decisions go wrong here.
Volume and timing
How many times a week it runs and what a miss costs. Low-volume tasks rarely justify a new subscription; high-volume ones justify the pricing work further down this page.
Risk
What happens if a wrong answer goes unnoticed: money, a customer, a legal exposure. More risk means more human review, not less.
Success measure
One number you can count today, such as minutes per run, rework rounds or re-opened tickets, so the pilot starts from a baseline.
Replace, complement or retain, by department
For each department, what a general AI workspace can take on and what normally stays in a specialist system. Names of specific vendor products are left out on purpose: their plans and limits change and differ by tier, so confirm them on each vendor's own page.
| Workflow | Job to be done | A general AI workspace can help with | Usually stays in a specialist system | Our lean |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SalesAI for sales | Account research, outreach drafts, call-note summaries | Drafting and personalizing outreach, summarizing call notes, preparing an account brief from material you paste in or connect. | Contact and deal records, pipeline stages, sequencing and the infrastructure that sends and tracks email. | Complement |
| MarketingMarketing-specific toolsAI for marketing | Content, ad variants, campaign write-ups | First drafts, headline and ad-copy variants, brand-voice rewrites, and summaries of performance exports you provide. | Publishing and scheduling, ad platforms, analytics, and any asset-approval workflow. | ReplaceThe drafting step only. |
| Customer support | Replies, macros, thread summaries, live resolution | Drafting replies and macros for a person to approve, summarizing long threads, rewriting help-center articles. | The live queue, routing, customer history, SLAs and any customer-facing automation. | RetainAI helps agents inside it. |
| OperationsSmall business automation | SOPs, meeting summaries, process documentation | Drafting and tidying SOPs, turning meeting notes into action lists, explaining a process to a new hire. | Task and project trackers, workflow engines with permissions, and anything that needs an audit trail. | ReplaceDocumentation and summaries. |
| FinanceAI for finance | Variance commentary, forecast narrative, spreadsheet help | Drafting commentary from exports you supply, explaining a variance, writing and checking spreadsheet formulas with a person verifying the numbers. | The general ledger, reconciliation, approvals, statutory reporting and the audit trail. | RetainNumbers stay in the ledger. |
| HR | Job posts, onboarding material, policy wording | Drafting job posts and onboarding checklists, rewording policy text in plain language for a person to approve. | Employee records, payroll, applicant tracking and access permissions. People decisions stay with people. | Complement |
The last column is an editorial judgement by ZeroTwo, which sells a general AI workspace, so weigh it accordingly. It is not a benchmark or a test result. Where your own system of record, approvals or volume differ, your answer should too.
What a general workspace can replace, in ZeroTwo's case
ZeroTwo is a chat and agent workspace. That is a good fit for the "replace" and "complement" rows above and the wrong tool for the "retain" ones.
What it covers
- Chat across 60+ models, so you can try the same prompt on more than one
- Work agent and ZeroCode on Plus and above
- Deep research on Plus and above (Plus draws on credits)
- Web search and image generation (limited on Free), and multiple file uploads per task on paid plans
- Projects and memory for keeping context between sessions
- Business plan with pooled credits, shared projects and simplified billing
Plan gates and allowances are on the pricing page.
What it is not
- A CRM: contact, deal and pipeline records
- A help desk: queues, routing and SLAs
- An accounting ledger or payroll system
- A permissioned approval workflow with an audit trail
- Anything you have not confirmed a connection for. Check the list before assuming one exists.
Check the supported ZeroTwo integrations and the connectors list for the systems you actually use.
Calculate total cost for a realistic team
A stack total is only meaningful if every line uses the same unit. Convert each tool to a monthly cost for your own seats and volume, then add the costs that are not on a pricing page.
The formula
Monthly total = seats × seat price + usage charges + specialist tools you keep + implementation ÷ months + review time
ZeroTwo seat prices
- Plus
- $14.99 /mo
- Pro
- $29.99 /mo
- Business
- $39.99 /mo
$11.99/mo billed annually. 1,650 monthly credits plus 1,000 free Auto requests.
$26.99/mo billed annually. 3,500 monthly credits, 2,500 free Auto requests, 1,500 Firecrawl credits and 10,000 ElevenLabs credits per month.
$35.99/mo billed annually. 4,000 monthly credits per seat, pooled across the team.
| Line | Basis | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| AI workspace: 6 seats on Pro | 6 × $29.99 | $179.94 |
| Specialist tool you keep (placeholder, use your own quote) | Fixed monthly quote | $100.00 |
| Usage or per-resolution charges | Expected units × unit price | Add yours |
| Implementation and training | One-off cost ÷ months you expect to use it | Add yours |
| Review time | Hours per week × hourly cost × 4.3 | Add yours |
| Subtotal of the lines filled in above | $279.94 | |
6 seats and the $100.00 specialist line are made-up inputs to show the arithmetic; the Pro seat price comes from ZeroTwo's pricing. The three "Add yours" lines are left out of the subtotal, so the real total will be higher. Credits and Auto requests are monthly allowances, so heavy agent use can exceed a plain per-seat sum. See the ZeroTwo plan comparison and the broader AI cost comparison.
Run a low-risk pilot
Five steps, one workflow. The point is a decision you can defend, not a demo.
Pick one workflow with one owner
Choose something that runs often, has a clear output and is cheap to get wrong, such as a weekly summary or a first-draft reply. Avoid anything that touches money or a legal commitment first.
Record a baseline
Time one normal run the current way. Note how many rounds of rework it takes and who reviews it. These are your numbers, not an industry average.
Set the review standard
Write down what a person must check before the output is used, and what data must never be pasted in. Keep it to a few lines the team will actually read.
Run it for a fixed period
Keep the same owner and the same workflow, and log time, rework and anything the AI got wrong. A few weeks of real runs beats a single impressive demo.
Decide: replace, complement or retain
Compare against the baseline, write down the exit criterion (what would make you stop) and only then change subscriptions. Keep your measured results apart from survey statistics: adoption surveys do not show that a product pays for itself.
Review data, control and rollout requirements
Put the same six questions to every vendor, including us. For ZeroTwo, the Privacy Policy and Terms are the documents that apply.
- Access
- Who can see which workspaces, projects and conversations, and how you remove someone the day they leave.
- Retention
- What the vendor stores, for how long, and how you delete it. Ask for the written answer.
- Permissions
- When a tool connects to a source system, does it respect that system's existing permissions or flatten them?
- Ownership
- Who administers the account, who owns prompts and outputs, and who approves new connections.
- Training
- A short written rule for what may be pasted in, plus a walkthrough for the people who will use it.
- Support
- What the vendor does when something breaks, how you reach them, and who on your side is the contact.
Questions buyers ask
When should I keep a specialized tool?
Keep it when it is your system of record, enforces permissions, approvals or an audit trail, runs a live customer channel, or has integrations your team depends on every day. A general AI workspace can sit beside it for drafting and analysis, but it does not inherit those responsibilities.
How should I compare per-seat and usage-based prices?
Convert both to a monthly figure for your real volume: seats times the seat price, plus expected units times the unit price, plus any minimum. Then add implementation and review time. ZeroTwo Pro is $29.99 per person per month with a monthly credit allowance, and Business is $39.99 per seat per month with pooled credits, so heavy agent use can exceed a plain per-seat sum.
Which integrations are essential for my workflow?
List the systems where the input data lives and where the result must land, then check each connection exists and whether it reads, writes or both. A tool that can read your documents but cannot write back to your CRM may still be fine for a drafting workflow and wrong for an updating one.
What should a pilot measure?
One workflow, measured the same way before and after: time per run, rounds of rework, time spent reviewing, and the mistakes a reviewer caught. Record these yourself over a fixed period and decide against the exit criterion you wrote down at the start.
Can a multi-model workspace replace a CRM or support platform?
No. A multi-model workspace such as ZeroTwo is for chat, drafting, analysis, research and agent tasks. It is not a CRM, a help desk, a ledger or an HR system, and it does not replace their records, queues and audit trails. It can speed up the writing and analysis done around them.
What does ZeroTwo cost for a small team?
Plus is $14.99 per person per month, Pro is $29.99 ($26.99 per month billed annually) and Business is $39.99 per seat per month ($35.99 billed annually). Each includes a monthly credit allowance, listed on the pricing page.
Where to go next
- Lean-team pathStart with a lean-team workflowFor owner-operators who need a narrower implementation path.
- Larger teamsEnterprise selection requirementsFor procurement, governance and large teams.
- Model choiceBest AI for businessThe companion guide on which models and platforms to choose, rather than which workflows to hand over.
- PlansZeroTwo plan comparisonCredits, Auto requests and agent access side by side, per plan.
- CostAI cost comparisonCompare subscription costs across AI products before you consolidate anything.
- ConnectionsSupported ZeroTwo integrationsCheck which systems ZeroTwo can connect to before you plan the workflow.
Running a SaaS company? See the SaaS expansion revenue playbook and the SaaS knowledge base software guide.
Test one business workflow
Pick the workflow from your brief and run it on the Free plan (100 free credits to start, plus 20 bonus credits every day you log in, no card required) before you change any subscription.