A Southern California fire content restoration company was drowning in manual item research. We built a custom AI system that turned a month-long process into a same-day workflow.
3 → 1
Full-time employees
Now only QA
30+ → 1
Days per project
Same-day delivery
10,000+
Items per house
Fully automated
2-3 wks
Time to build
Discovery to deploy
The Problem
When a home is damaged by fire, a contents restoration company is brought in to catalog every item in the house — furniture, electronics, appliances, clothing, kitchenware, everything. Each item needs to be individually researched to find its current retail replacement price so the insurance company can properly reimburse the homeowner.
For this SoCal-based company, a single house could contain anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000+ items. Every one of those items had to be entered into a spreadsheet, manually researched online to find the best current price, and then verified for accuracy. On top of that, the correct local tax percentage had to be calculated for each item based on the client's specific city or jurisdiction.
This process required 3 full-time employees working exclusively on item research and verification. Even with a dedicated team, each client project took over a month to complete. The manual nature of the work meant errors were common, consistency was difficult to maintain, and scaling to take on more clients was nearly impossible.
3 full-time employees dedicated to manual research
1+ month turnaround per client project
2,000-10,000+ items researched by hand per house
No standardized tax calculation across jurisdictions
Inconsistent pricing sources and verification
Unable to scale to take on more clients
Our Process
We spent the first week embedded in their process — understanding how items were cataloged, how pricing was researched, how spreadsheets were structured, and where the bottlenecks lived. We mapped every step from intake to insurance submission.
We designed a custom AI pipeline that could ingest item lists, research pricing across major retailers (Target, Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart), calculate location-based tax, and output verified results with confidence scoring and source URLs.
We built the system, integrated it with their existing workflow, and added smart flagging for items over or under $500 that needed human verification. The tax calculation module was calibrated to pull accurate rates by city and jurisdiction.
We ran the system against real historical projects to validate accuracy, refined the confidence scoring thresholds, and deployed to production. Their team was trained on the QA workflow in a single session.
The Solution
We built a custom AI pipeline that automates the entire contents pricing and verification workflow — from item identification to price research, tax calculation, and quality flagging.
The AI researches and verifies pricing for every single item in a fire-damaged home. It searches across major retailers — Target, Amazon, Home Depot, Walmart — and returns the actual retail price along with the source URL for full transparency.
A custom tax percentage module that automatically identifies the correct tax code based on the client's city or area. No more manual lookups or guesswork — every item gets the accurate local tax rate applied automatically.
Every item match receives a confidence score from the AI. High-confidence matches sail through automatically, while lower-confidence items are flagged for human review. The team knows exactly where to focus their attention.
Items priced under or over $500 are automatically highlighted for priority QA verification. This ensures high-value items get the extra scrutiny they need while low-risk items are processed efficiently.
Before & After
Before
After Vantier
Employees Required
3 full-time
1 (QA only)
Turnaround Per Client
30+ days
Hours
Items Per House
Manual research
AI-processed
Tax Calculation
Manual lookup
Automated by location
Price Verification
Spreadsheet-based
URL-sourced with confidence scores
Quality Assurance
Spot-checking
Smart flagging ($500+ items)
The AI Operations Map is a one-week diagnostic where we map your core workflow, identify the primary bottleneck, and deliver a precise AI Solution Blueprint.
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