01
Establish the current cost
Collect monthly volume, average handling time and the cost of the people involved. Separate active work from waiting because reducing elapsed time can create substantial value even when handling minutes change less.
Include corrections, complaints, duplicates, penalties, missed opportunities and reports produced outside systems. Use a representative sample when complete data is unavailable.
02
Calculate the full solution cost
Budget for analysis, configuration, integration, migration, testing, training, licences and support. Include the time of process owners, IT and users during delivery.
- one-off project cost;
- recurring licence and infrastructure cost;
- monitoring, maintenance and process changes;
- exception and outage handling;
- contract exit or supplier replacement.
03
Avoid double counting benefits
Saved hours do not automatically become cash savings. If staffing remains unchanged, the value may be higher capacity, a shorter queue or time moved to higher-value work.
Do not count the same hours as both full labour reduction and full capacity growth. Conservative, realistic and ambitious scenarios make uncertainty explicit.
04
Use pilot evidence
Annual net benefit combines savings and avoided losses, less recurring cost. Payback shows when accumulated benefit covers the initial cost.
Replace estimates with actual pilot results before scaling. Low adoption or poor quality should pause expansion until the cause is addressed.
SOURCES
Verified source material
Information was checked on the publication date. Legal obligations should always be assessed for the specific organisation and use case.