Last month we built an automation ROI calculator: pick your boring tasks, put in the hours and the hourly cost, and it hands you the yearly bill. Simple idea. But to make the numbers honest we had to research what these tasks actually cost Canadian businesses, and that research taught us more than we expected. Here is what surprised us.
The inbox is the most expensive room in the building
Of every task we benchmarked, answering and triaging email came out on top: for a typical 5 to 25 person business it runs $12,000 to $25,000 a year. Not writing thoughtful replies to customers. Sorting, forwarding, “just looping in Sarah”, and answering the same six questions on rotation. Nobody budgets for it because it does not look like work. It looks like being responsive. The calculator disagrees.
Almost nobody knows what an hour actually costs them
Ask an owner what their office manager makes and they will tell you to the dollar. Ask what an hour of that person’s time costs the business and the answer is usually the same number, which is wrong. Payroll taxes, benefits, software seats and management overhead ride along with every wage. A $30 an hour employee typically costs $38 to $45 loaded. Every waste estimate a business makes with the sticker wage is understated by about a third, which means every “not worth fixing” decision was made with a discount applied.
Quotes are where the invisible money hides
Writing quotes and estimates benchmarks at $9,000 to $18,000 a year. It is the task owners most reliably underestimate, because it is spread across the week in 45-minute bites and it feels like selling, so it must be worth it. Some of it is. The part where you retype the same scope paragraphs and look up the same prices for the fourth time this week is not. This one stings because it is also the task most commonly done by the most expensive person in the company.
The dumbest task is the best first automation
Retyping data between systems ($8,000 to $16,000 a year) is the least glamorous line on anyone’s list, and it is the one we would automate first almost every time. No judgment calls, no tone to get right, no customer on the other end. Just the same fields moving from one screen to another, which is precisely the work software never gets bored of. If you want an automation win with essentially no risk, this is it.
The math is more lopsided than we expected
A first automation typically costs $3,000 to $10,000 to build, fixed price. Set that against the numbers above and the payback windows get almost embarrassing: a task costing $15,000 a year, 70 percent automatable, pays for a mid-range build in under six months. And the second automation is cheaper than the first, because tasks share plumbing: once your systems are connected for one workflow, the next one rides the same rails.
Sometimes the honest answer is “not yet”
The benchmark work cut the other way too. A task costing a couple of thousand a year is usually not worth automating, no matter how annoying it is. The calculator will tell you that to your face, and so will we. Automating the wrong thing well is still the wrong thing, and finding the right first target is most of what our audit is for.
Run your own numbers
Benchmarks are averages, and your business is not average. The calculator takes about two minutes: build your list, see the yearly bill, and if you want an honest second opinion, send the list to Simon. He reads every one, and “not worth it yet” is a real answer you might get.
