Is this workflow worth automating?
Estimate potential savings, implementation costs and payback time before investing in workflow automation.
Business case
Estimated benefit, payback and sensitivity.
Estimated net benefit: $30,600
- Net annual run-rate benefit
- $45,600
- First-year net benefit
- $30,600
- Estimated payback period
- 3.9 months
- Estimated first-year ROI
- 146%
- Annual hours released
- 720
- Annual released capacity value
- $46,800
- Additional rework cost avoided
- $4,800
- Three-year net benefit
- $121,800
Equivalent annual operating cost
Adoption sensitivity
First-year benefit when only adoption changes by up to 15 percentage points.
Released hours are not guaranteed cash savings. The return depends on avoiding actual costs or productively redeploying that capacity.
How the business case is built
We value released hours at the stated labor cost and add avoided rework costs that are not already included in those hours. Adoption reduces both potential benefits. We then subtract the initial investment and recurring costs.
- Gross benefit = released capacity value + additional rework cost avoided.
- First-year benefit = annual gross benefit minus implementation and 12 months of recurring costs.
- ROI = first-year net benefit divided by implementation and first-year recurring costs.
The first year means 12 full months after launch. Payback is measured from launch, with implementation paid upfront and benefits spread evenly. Development delays and gradual adoption ramps are not modeled. The three-year projection holds costs and benefits constant without discounting.
Validate the case with process owners, Finance and actual operating data before investing.
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