Before starting a new process automation project, you need to get it approved by your management. During this meeting, you will certainly be asked the crucial question: “What return on investment (ROI) can we expect from this project?” Its future will then depend on your answer to this question. In this article, we therefore give you the method to accurately and reliably calculate the ROI of your process automation in order to convince your managers to take the plunge.

Make the provisional budget of your project reliable

According to a recent study, more than 60% of organizations are reconsidering their process automation strategy in the light of new organizational arrangements or new economic circumstances. Moreover, this is hardly surprising given the impacts caused by the COVID-19 pandemic around the world.

Little by little, organizations are allocating substantial budgets to accelerate their digital transformations, improve the customer experience, increase the productivity of their employees and reduce their costs.

However, getting a new process automation initiative off the ground is not always easy. Therefore, if you can demonstrate The benefits that automation can bring to your organization, you will be more likely to get the budget needed to deploy your new automation platform.

The qualitative advantages of process automation or soft ROI

These benefits, while more difficult to illustrate with numbers, should not be overlooked when it comes to why you should embark on a process automation project.

Improving the customer experience : process automation provides data that allows the customer journey to be put into perspective and helps organizations create more personalized experiences.

Greater employee satisfaction : tasks that are automated are often those that are painful, time-consuming and repetitive. Employees may be released to engage in more rewarding work, which can even make them look older Productive.

Improving the quality of processes : processes are planned and modelled prior to automation, which provides a visibility and opportunities for simplification and improvement.

Better orchestration of the activity : automation promotes the coordination of people, systems and information across the organization for support the company's strategy.

Increased agility : an approach to process automation based on the principle “Start small, think big” means that the organization can deploy processes quickly, by providing incremental changes as you go to get convincing results.

The quantitative benefits of process automation or Hard KING

Benefits that offer a concrete return on investment, illustrated by numbers, are more likely to attract the attention of your company's leaders and easier to calculate. Indeed, they are based on real numbers that you have access to.

Productivity improvement : automated processes are deployed throughout the company, relieving workers from manual tasks, including auditing, which saves time and therefore money.

Large-scale cost savings : savings can be achieved in a variety of ways, including replacing existing systems and digitizing processes to save paper costs used in internal and external communications.

Improving service delivery : by reducing cycle times through process automation, businesses can increase upsells, increase customer retention, and reduce dissatisfaction.

How do you calculate your ROI?

The digital transformation consulting firm Forrester has created a very simple tool to allow you to calculate your estimated ROI on process automation. All you need to do is enter the following key information

• The number of employees of your organization
• The total annual income Of the organization
• The estimated number of business processes to be automated over the next three years
• The Average wage rate of a business user

This information will allow you to obtain a net present value (NPV) estimated over three years And a estimated return on investment over three years.

Using this estimator and based on in-depth interviews with five customers from our technology partner Bizagi, Forrester created the study, The Total Economic Impact™ Of Bizagi's Low-Code Intelligent Process Automation Platform. The result is a Average ROI of 288%, with a NPV of $24.7 million.

About StoryShaper:

StoryShaper is an innovative start-up that supports its customers in defining their digital strategy and the development of automation solutions tailor-made.

Sources: StoryShaper, Bizagi, Forrester