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Automation practice
Calculating business process automation ROI
A simple model prevents automating chaos and compares implementation with the real cost of manual work.
ROI / 01Annual impact = current cost − future costROI / 02Payback = investment / average monthly impact
Current cost
- Monthly staff hours × fully loaded hourly cost
- Error correction cost
- Delay losses
- Control and rechecking cost
Future cost
- Implementation
- External service plans
- Support and monitoring
- Manual exception handling
Formula
Annual impact = current annual cost − future annual cost. Payback period = investment / average monthly impact. Use conservative, base and optimistic scenarios.
When not to automate
- The process changes weekly
- The operation is rare
- There is no process owner
- Failures cannot be detected
- An existing service solves it more cheaply
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Must we automate everything at once?
No. Automate one stable flow, measure the effect and expand only after validation.
How is quality included?
Add error cost, customer response time, missed enquiries and management control time.