What gets simulated
Each ROI input has a distribution, not a point value. The defaults Observatory ships with:
You can override any of these per agent or per project.
What the analysis produces
Each Monte Carlo run produces:- p10 / p50 / p90 for monthly savings, payback, annual ROI, and NPV
- A tornado chart showing which inputs drive the most variance
- A histogram of NPV outcomes
- “Base case (p50) NPV is $4.6M”
- “There’s a 90% chance NPV is above $2.9M”
- “There’s a 10% chance NPV is above $6.1M”
Running an analysis
1
Open ROI → Sensitivity
Pick the project or VOU to analyse.
2
Confirm or adjust input distributions
The defaults are reasonable starting points. For mature deployments with measured variance, tighten them.
3
Pick the iteration count
1,000 iterations is enough for most use cases. 10,000 for board-grade reports. Anything beyond is overkill.
4
Run
Results appear in under a minute. They persist as a
SensitivityRun so you can compare two analyses side by side.Reading the tornado
The tornado chart sorts inputs by how much variance they contribute to NPV. Typical result for a mature agent:- Volume — usually dominates
- Replacement ratio — second largest
- Manual hours per case — meaningful
- LLM cost — surprisingly small (cost is small vs savings)
- Discount rate — minor
When to present this
Quarterly business reviews
Pair the p50 with the p10–p90 band. Discuss what’s driving the spread.
Investment committee
A 90% confidence floor that’s still positive is the strongest case you can make.
Post-mortems on miss
When actuals come in below p50, the tornado tells you which assumption was wrong.
Pre-implementation sign-off
Show the p10 — if the worst case is unacceptable, scope or delay.
Related resources
Financial ROI
The point-estimate calculation sensitivity builds on.
Value Outcome Units
Sensitivity bands also apply at the VOU level.