IMPROBABLY.ART / THE COST OF DOING IT MANUALLY
Administration rarely looks expensive.
That is one reason it survives.
A ten-minute task seems insignificant.
Performed five times per day by four employees across forty-eight working weeks, it becomes something else.
The basic equation
Annual administrative cost =
Employees involved × task frequency × time per task × working periods × hourly employment cost
The arithmetic is not particularly sophisticated.
Its implications occasionally are.
Example
Suppose:
- 4 employees
- 15 minutes per task
- 4 times per day
- 220 working days per year
- €30 effective labour cost per hour
For one administrative process.
The company may have dozens.
The relevant question
Not all of this cost is recoverable.
Not every step should be automated.
And automation itself has a cost.
The correct calculation therefore asks:
How much recurring administrative work can be removed reliably?
Then:
How quickly does the implementation pay for itself?
A sensible automation should have an economic case before it has an architecture diagram.
Hidden cost
The direct labour cost is only part of the problem.
Administrative work also creates:
- interruptions
- context switching
- delayed response times
- inconsistent data
- avoidable errors
- duplicated work
- dependency on individual employees
- reduced time for higher-value tasks
These costs are more difficult to measure.
They are not therefore imaginary.
The principle
If the economics do not work, neither should the automation.