Cost · 10
Hours saved are not cash in the account
Microsoft has reported Cowork examples: an engineering team editing batch-job spreadsheets, another comparing nearly four thousand files, a sales lead turning a week of review into a morning. Those are reported examples, not a measured promise for your work. A company new to AI should not book the morning as a saving.
Keep two columns
Time saved and cash released are different. A person who finishes a pack before lunch may spend the afternoon checking it, or may not. Supervision, rework and the credits are costs. If they are missing from the sheet, the sheet is a hope. The FrontierOrg method, a fictional simulation, writes the sum as verified improvement, minus licences, credits, integration, training, oversight and remediation. Copy the shape of the sum.
Cleanup can beat the agent
In that same fiction, a broken match between customer systems is allowed to be the cheaper fix. The fictional board is asked whether data cleanup outperforms an assistant. Your version of the question does not need a fictional company. It needs a process owner who can say where the hour actually goes.
Do not brief the four thousand
The four thousand files are Microsoft's report about a deployment, not a target. If you repeat the number in your own business case, you are borrowing someone else's week. Run one of your own tasks and keep your own hours, including the hours spent checking.
Monday
Take one task Cowork might do. Write hours now, hours you think you would still spend checking, and credits unknown or known. Leave the cash line blank until those three exist.
If the hours come back and the headcount does not, what exactly did you save?
Sources: Microsoft, 16 June 2026, Copilot Cowork is now generally available (opens in a new tab).
Where this note mentions FrontierOrg, that is a fictional method for rehearsing a decision. It is not a company, not a client, and not a case study.