Building the business case for automation
How to present hours-saved numbers that a CFO and a board will accept — including the costs most automation proposals conveniently leave out.
THE SHORT ANSWER
- Count only clerical hours, at a loaded rate, from timed observation — never from estimates.
- Deduct build cost, annual support and licences before you state a saving.
- Show payback in months; boards understand months better than percentages.
- State what you will stop doing, and who owns the recovered hours.
The four numbers a board actually wants
Recoverable hours per year, the loaded hourly cost behind them, the one-off build cost, and the ongoing annual cost. Everything else in a business case is narrative. If a proposal shows a saving without the last two numbers, expect it to be sent back.
120 baseline compliance hours + 25 per trainer + 6 of the ~12 panel hours per validation.
Clerical hours only. No revenue assumptions, no productivity multipliers.
Annual running cost, stated up front rather than discovered later.
The only number worth putting on a slide.
Payback in about seven months.
Loaded rate of A$58/hr reflects a ~A$95k package against 1,600 productive hours — an Australian benchmark you can defend line by line.
The three objections you should pre-empt
"Those hours won't actually disappear" — name what stops, and who owns the freed time. "We've been burned before" — show a measured pilot rather than a projection. "What if it breaks?" — state the manual fallback for each automated step. All three are reasonable, and answering them in the paper is faster than answering them in the meeting.
WORKED EXAMPLE
A CFO rejected the first version of a proposal because the saving was expressed as 2,400 hours and 480% ROI. The second version showed 996 hours, A$50,088 net after running costs, a seven-month payback, and one sentence naming the quality officer who would absorb the recovered hours into validation depth. It was approved without discussion.
Measure after, not just before
Commit to reporting actual hours and error rates monthly for the first year. Automation that nobody measures is indistinguishable from automation that quietly stopped working — and a measured first project is what funds the second.
Frequently asked questions
State four numbers: recoverable clerical hours per year, loaded hourly cost, one-off build cost, and annual running cost. Present the net saving and payback in months, and name who owns the recovered hours.
Around A$58 per hour loaded for compliance and trainer staff — roughly a A$95k package divided by 1,600 productive hours. Using a headline salary divided by 2,080 hours understates the true cost.
Typically six to twelve months for a mid-size provider on a single scoped workflow. Under about eight validations a month, payback stretches past a year and a lighter approach is usually the honest recommendation.
Because a board will find them anyway. Support, licences and hosting are real; deducting them up front turns a suspicious headline into a defensible net figure.
Get the numbers for your RTO
The audit produces a board-ready business case you keep either way.