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From David Ortiz · Advisor AI Partners
Putting some numbers to what we talked about
Lee & Cates · AI Audit
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Thomas,
I’ve been thinking about our conversation and realized I probably didn’t do a great job of showing what the audit actually looks like in practice. You shared a lot with me that day, and I wanted to lay out what I’d actually be doing with all of that — so you can see whether it makes sense for you.
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The invoice process — your words
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You called this “probably the most glaring manual process we do.” Here’s how you described it:
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Invoice arrives → gets printed or emailed across the building |
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Someone looks it up, confirms receipt, handwrites the GL code |
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Signs it, puts it in a folder, waits for the boss to approve and turn it in |
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Corporate manually keys it into Sage 100 with GL codes and due dates |
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Credit card invoices filed separately — so finding anything is a treasure hunt |
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Five file cabinets a year. And it’s the biggest bottleneck slowing month-end close. |
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You also mentioned DocuWare — $1,500 a month, rigid rules, couldn’t learn the nuance of who an invoice goes to at Lee & Cates. You said it didn’t have that “teach-you factor.”
That’s exactly what’s changed. AI today can extract data from invoices (even scanned PDFs), learn the routing logic specific to your company, manage the approval chain, generate Sage 100 import files, and make every invoice instantly searchable. No file cabinets. No handwriting. No treasure hunts.
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Rough math — just the invoice piece
| Labor on routing, coding, filing, and keying across locations |
~20 hrs/week |
| Estimated annual cost at $25/hr loaded |
~$26,000/yr |
| Realistic automation of 60–70% |
~$16,000/yr saved |
| These are ballpark numbers — the audit would nail them down with your actual data. |
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And that’s one process. You walked me through at least six others that day.
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The other areas you brought up
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Order Status Calls at FGD
Customers calling to check on orders. Your team stops what they’re doing to look it up. You mentioned a self-service portal could handle most of it.
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Retail Lead Reactivation
40% of retail leads that don’t close and never get followed back up on. HubSpot was the right idea, wrong execution and wrong cost structure.
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Marketing Spend Visibility
$40–50K a month across Google, Facebook, radio, billboards — and the classic question of which half is working.
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SmartGlazer + Syncly + Fenevision
The API question, what stores can see vs. what they can’t, and whether a lightweight view layer beats paying for modules you don’t need.
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Sage 100 Reporting
Your CFO is already pulling data into Claude because Sage’s native reporting is too rigid. There’s a way to make that systematic.
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HR & Policy Knowledge Base
Policies in PDFs, inboxes, and a SharePoint site nobody can edit. You said it — having a searchable AI layer is the unlock.
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How the audit actually works
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I wanted to be more specific about what the month would look like, since my first email was vague on that:
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Discovery Interviews
2–4 hours each with you, your CFO, Gordon, and the FGD tech lead. I use separate interview frameworks for leadership vs. the people doing the daily work — the gaps between those two perspectives are usually where the biggest opportunities hide.
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Operations Map + Opportunity Scoring
I map your tech stack, data flows, and handoffs across all divisions. Every manual process gets scored on three dimensions: time consumed, revenue impact, and how ready it is to automate. You end up with a clear picture of what’s a quick win, what’s a bigger play, and what to leave alone.
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Deliverable: Prioritized Roadmap with ROI
Not a slide deck. A real plan — current state vs. future state for each opportunity, cost estimates, projected savings, and a recommended sequence. Something you could hand to your team and say “here’s what we’re doing and why.”
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Thomas, I know you’re already deep in this world — building apps in Claude Code, running your own VPS, experimenting with everything. What I kept hearing in our conversation is that you have the pieces but not the full map yet. That’s what this would give you.
No pressure on timing. I’m heading to Lisbon on April 27 for a month, and everything can be done by video call regardless. If it makes sense, let’s talk it through. If the timing isn’t right, that’s fine too — I just wanted to make sure you had the full picture of what it would look like.
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David
(305) 254-4455
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