The Handbook · entry 02
How to co-sign an AI outcome baseline
The single highest-leverage document in an enterprise AI engagement is not the architecture diagram or the contract. It is the baseline: a measured, co-signed statement of how the process runs today. Everything defensible about AI ROI descends from it, and almost nobody writes one. Here is how we do it, published because we would rather compete on execution than on secrecy.
What a baseline actually contains
A usable baseline states, in numbers read from the systems of record: the volume the process handles, the steps it takes, the time each step consumes, the touches per transaction, the exception rate, the fully loaded cost per unit, and the outcome quality measures the business already trusts. It names the measurement window, the data sources, and the exclusions. One page is achievable. Two is acceptable. Ten is a sign somebody is hiding.
Why both sides sign it
An unsigned baseline is a vendor's homework; a co-signed one is a shared instrument. The client's CFO or process owner signs because their team supplied and checked the numbers. The partner signs because their fee will be judged against it. From that moment, the end-of-engagement conversation is arithmetic: the reading against the baseline, from the client's own systems, where their auditors can check it. Consulting ran a century on the honor system. A signature on a starting number replaces the honor system with a meter.
How the lock gets made
The principles matter more than the checklist. Observe before you measure, because the documented process and the real one differ everywhere it counts. Agree the one number that matters with the executive who owns the P&L, not the project team. Measure from systems of record rather than interviews, over a window both sides accept. Then sign it in a room, with the finance owner present, and version it when something material changes.
What it changes commercially
A co-signed baseline makes outcome-linked fees possible: a floor that keeps the team running, and a share that bills only as the number moves. It also makes honesty cheap. If the redesign is not going to clear the baseline, everyone learns it in weeks, on a fixed fee, instead of in year two of a transformation program.
If your AI partner will not co-sign your starting number, ask what they are planning to tell you at the end.