What an automation is actually worth

Most automation is sold on adjectives. Faster. Streamlined. Smarter. None of it survives contact with a finance director who wants to know what the thing costs and what it returns.

So here is the sum we do on every call, before anyone has agreed to anything.

The four numbers

You need exactly four, and the person who does the task has all of them:

• How many times a week does this happen?
• How many minutes does one take, honestly, including the interruptions?
• Who does it, and what does that person cost per hour, fully loaded?
• What happens when it goes wrong, and how often is that?

Multiply the first three and you have the annual cost of doing nothing:

(times per week × minutes each ÷ 60) × 52 × loaded hourly cost

A worked example

A coordinator re-keys 32 orders a week from the CRM into a form. Each takes about 11 minutes. That is 305 hours a year. At a loaded cost of $38 an hour, the process costs roughly $11,590 a year to keep doing by hand.

A fixed-price build to remove it: $3,200. Divide the build by the monthly saving and you get a payback of about 3.3 months.

Under six months, and the decision usually makes itself. Over twelve, and we would tell you to wait.

The number everyone forgets

The fourth question is the one that gets skipped, and it is often the largest. A mistyped order that ships to the wrong address does not cost eleven minutes — it costs the item, the return shipping, and some fraction of a customer relationship.

You do not need a precise figure. You need the order of magnitude, and whether it happens weekly or yearly.

What we will not do

We will not quote a percentage improvement we cannot measure. If a figure on this site comes from a reference build rather than a client engagement, it says so next to the number.

The point of the arithmetic is not to sell the build. It is to find out, together and early, whether the build is worth selling.