> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.flowx.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Value Outcome Units

> Group agents by business outcome so technical metrics translate to board-level revenue and cost language.

A Value Outcome Unit (VOU) is a named business outcome you can attach agents to — Customer Onboarding, Fraud Detection, Claims Processing. Each VOU rolls up the ROI of every agent contributing to it, so the conversation moves from "GPT-4 is expensive" to "Claims Processing nets us \$1.4M a year".

***

## Why VOUs matter

LLM cost dashboards talk about agents. Executives talk about outcomes. VOUs are the bridge.

| Technical view                        | Executive view (VOU)                         |
| ------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------- |
| "claims-approval p95 is 2.1s"         | "Claims Processing handles 14k cases/month"  |
| "intake-bot costs \$0.07/call"        | "Customer Onboarding saves \$480k/year"      |
| "fraud-classifier error rate is 1.2%" | "Fraud Detection prevented \$2.1M in losses" |

***

## Anatomy of a VOU

| Field              | Meaning                                                                |
| ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Name**           | Business-readable, e.g. "Claims Processing".                           |
| **Owner**          | The business sponsor (not the engineering owner).                      |
| **Member agents**  | One or many agents that contribute.                                    |
| **Outcome metric** | The KPI the unit moves — cases handled, calls resolved, revenue saved. |
| **Baseline cost**  | What this outcome cost before AI (manual labour, RPA, outsourcing).    |
| **Risk factor**    | A scalar 0.0–1.0 that adjusts net contribution for compliance risk.    |

***

## Setting up a VOU

<Steps>
  <Step title="Open ROI → Value Outcomes">
    Click **New Value Outcome**.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Name and assign an owner">
    Use language the business uses. The owner sees this VOU in their executive view.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Add agents">
    Pick from the registered agents in your AI Registry. One agent can belong to multiple VOUs (e.g. a triage agent feeding both Onboarding and Support).
  </Step>

  <Step title="Define the baseline">
    Specify the manual cost for this outcome — for example, "12 FTE × $65/hr × 1,800 hrs/year" = $1.4M annual baseline.
  </Step>

  <Step title="Set the risk factor">
    Default 1.0 (no adjustment). Reduce for outcomes with significant compliance risk; the dashboard shows risk-adjusted net contribution alongside the raw number.
  </Step>
</Steps>

***

## What the VOU dashboard shows

For each Value Outcome:

* **Labour saved** — derived from baseline minus current ops cost
* **LLM cost** — sum of telemetry-derived cost across member agents
* **Net contribution** — labour saved minus LLM cost
* **Risk-adjusted net contribution** — net × risk factor
* **Volume** — outcome metric over time
* **Top contributing agents** — which agents drive most of the net

***

## Mapping to financial ROI

VOUs are the natural roll-up level for [Financial ROI](./financial-roi). The same payback, NPV, and annual ROI % numbers exist per agent and per VOU; most executive conversations live at the VOU level.

***

## Related resources

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Financial ROI" icon="chart-line" href="./financial-roi">
    Where VOU contributions become payback and NPV.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Sensitivity analysis" icon="sliders" href="./sensitivity-analysis">
    Show executives the range of outcomes, not just a point estimate.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>