Public administration · Rollout scenario · Updated
Document workflow in a public office: a case during cover
The system prepares, for an employee covering for a colleague, a view of the case material and the open questions. Registration and decisions stay in the office's own workflow.
Automation, paid once
from €3,000 net
Test on your process: €0
You pay 50% after acceptance
How much does document workflow automation cost in a public office, and when does it pay back?
Short answer
Document workflow automation in a public office costs from €3,000 net. In our scenario it pays back in 1.9 months. Today, handling 800 documents by hand costs €1,861 a month. With the system, the same work costs €284. Registration, classification and decisions stay in the office's workflow. The system prepares a view of the case for the stand-in. The test on your process is free.
Statistics
Documents, information and AI statistics 2026
−87%
According to Anthropic (2025), AI cuts the time of tasks such as invoices, memos and other documents by an estimated 87%.
According to the European Commission (2026), 90% of companies that use AI say people take the decisions. In these companies only 2% of decisions are fully automated.
The team gets back about 45 hours of work a month, or 6 working days, and the company €18,924 a year. We count after the time a person spends checking and after the model cost.
800 × 4 min = 53.3 h × €34.90 = €1,861 a month. With the system, a person checks the output in 15% of the old time (€279) and the model costs €5. That leaves €284. The saving is €1,577 a month, so €3,000 pays back in 1.9 months.
Assumptions: 4 minutes per document matched to a case and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: reading a document in our case-file system (about €0.0002) plus matching it to the case and a note on what is missing (Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 2,000 + 300 tokens), at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
What stays with people: Registration, classification and decisions stay in the office's workflow. The system prepares a view of the case for the stand-in.
foap.com customer service: 95% of replies are sent automatically.
Users from several countries write to foap.com, in several languages. The system reads the entire conversation and the terms of that person, and then sends a response in that person's language. Questions about money and exceptions go to the team with a ready draft, so they have to check and send them.
the system sends the answers itself, without human typing
95%
the system sends the answers itself, without human typing
time from the arrival of the e-mail to the ready response (median)
30 s
time from the arrival of the e-mail to the ready response (median)
e-mails that require a response receive a ready-made draft
100%
e-mails that require a response receive a ready-made draft
less work for every 1000 answers (estimate)
47 h
less work for every 1000 answers (estimate)
Data from foap.com production, October 20-21, 2026. Estimate: 3 minutes for handwritten response.
Every new document updates the case file, and the team sees at once what is missing and what does not match. A case with a gap or a contradiction waits for an employee's decision. Reading one document costs about €0.0002.
“We started with my own AI agent. During the training that followed, I learned to build new applications myself. Today I am bringing this way of working with AI into my business. Working with Syntalith gave me exactly the skills and tools I needed.”
You choose the test cases. We anonymise them on request.
They stay in the EU and we delete them after the test.
We sign the NDA and the data processing agreement before we receive anything.
After acceptance you keep the code, the test set and the documentation. You pay for licences and model usage directly to the provider.
Questions
How much does document workflow automation cost?
From €3,000 net, paid once. After the 5-day test the build takes 2 to 6 weeks. You get a fixed price before the contract: 50% on signing and 50% after acceptance on your own documents.
Does the system register letters in the electronic document system (EZD)?
No. Registration stays in your system. The system prepares a supporting view of the material and the open questions.
When does it not pay off?
Below 130 documents a month the payback takes more than a year. Then it is better to start with ChatGPT or Claude for the team, from €1,150 net.
What do we need to prepare?
20 to 100 cases from recent months (anonymised) with their notes, and a description of how you hand over cases during cover today.
What our OpenAI and Anthropic partnerships mean for you.
OpenAI makes ChatGPT and Anthropic makes Claude. We belong to the partnership programs of both companies, so we work with their tools every day and learn from the creators themselves.
Claude Partner Network
01We will select a tool for the task
We implement both ChatGPT and Claude. We check both on your documents, and you choose the one that makes fewer corrections and saves more time.
02Knowledge straight from the creators
We learn from official OpenAI and Anthropic courses and materials. Your team learns about the features and settings that work today.
03Licenses without our margin
You buy accounts directly from OpenAI or Anthropic and receive an invoice from them. We do not add anything to the license.
04Certified engineers
On the team, we have an AWS certification in machine learning and an Anthropic certification in systems architecture on Claude.
Participation in programs does not mean that OpenAI or Anthropic endorses our services.
customer service
