Loaded cost means salary plus employment costs and tooling — usually 1.2–1.4× the headline salary, not the salary itself.
These four are where every ROI model is won or lost. The defaults are what we would use for a first pass on a typical back-office process; they are not promises, and the honest range is wide.
The straight-through rate. Above 85% is rare in the first year and should be treated with suspicion in any proposal, including ours.
Exceptions do not become free. At 50% a case that took 9 minutes takes about 4½ when it lands on a person with the work already done.
Model and infrastructure usage, licences the flow needs, and the maintenance it takes to keep working when a supplier changes a format.
Move this until it matches a real quote. If payback only works at the bottom of the range, the project is marginal — that is useful to know now.
Hours spread thinly across many people. Twenty minutes saved for forty people is a nicer day, not a line in the P&L. Count it only if a role is not backfilled or a hire is not made.
Cycle time, error rates and rework. Often worth more than the labour saving and frequently easier to prove — but they belong in their own units, not converted into money with an invented multiplier.
Your internal project time. Realistically a few hours a week from whoever owns the process, and more during the pilot. It is not on our invoice and it is still a cost.
Volume growth. A process whose volume is rising is worth more than this shows, because you are also buying the headcount you will not add.
Payback lands inside two years. That can still be right, particularly if volume is growing, but it leaves little room for the assumptions to be optimistic.
Your numbers travel with the request. The mini-audit either confirms them or tells you where the model is wrong.
Why the baseline has to be measured before the build, and which hours actually count.
If the payback here is marginal, the process may be the wrong one.
What goes on the cost side: free mini-audit, fixed audit, fixed build.
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