Capture what your monthly reporting cycle costs before an automation project starts, so the benefit afterwards can be measured rather than claimed.
Because obvious does not survive a budget review a year later, when the sponsor has changed and someone asks what the last project delivered. A recorded baseline turns the benefit into arithmetic. Without one, every claim of improvement is an opinion, and the next project is harder to fund.
About an hour of structured conversation with the people who run the cycle, plus a look at the last twelve cycles for the correction rate. It is the cheapest step in the whole project and the one most often skipped.
That is itself a finding, and a common one. Record the range rather than averaging it away. A cycle that takes between twelve and forty hours depending on who you ask usually means the process varies by person, which is a different problem from the one you thought you had.
Yes. Hours alone makes automation look purely like a cost saving, which invites a cheaper alternative. Including the correction rate reframes it as a control improvement, which is harder to argue against and closer to the truth.
It is most useful then. Knowing what the cycle costs is what tells you whether to automate, fix definitions, or change the process, and those are three different projects with different prices.
Every automation project claims to have saved time. Almost none can prove it, because nobody wrote down what the cycle cost before the work started. This worksheet captures the baseline, step by step, so the benefit is arithmetic afterwards rather than an argument. It takes about an hour and it is worth more than any projection.
Capture what your monthly reporting cycle costs before an automation project starts, so the benefit afterwards can be measured rather than claimed.
A reporting baseline records what the current cycle costs in hours, people, and elapsed days before any automation work begins. Without it, a later claim of improvement cannot be checked. With it, the benefit is a subtraction rather than a projection, which is what a finance sponsor will accept.
Walk one real cycle, not an idealised one. The steps nobody mentions are usually where the time goes.
Name the role. If a controller or a director is in the chain, record it separately, because their hours cost several times what the pack preparer's do.
These are different numbers and both matter. Elapsed days is what leadership feels. Working hours is what the business pays for.
The chase, the restatement, the apologetic email. Record how often, because these are the steps automation removes most reliably.
This is the half that protects you. If a project reduces hours but increases errors, the baseline is what proves it.
Count the last twelve cycles. A correction rate above one in six is common and almost nobody tracks it.
Source data, manual entry, a definition disagreement, or a timing difference. The cause determines whether automation helps at all. Automating a definition dispute makes it faster and still wrong.
Including the re-review and the re-distribution, not just the fix.
If none, say so. That is a finding rather than an embarrassment, and it tells you what controls the new process has to add.
Agree these before the work starts and the conversation afterwards is short.
Separate numbers. A cycle that drops from three days to four hours is a different claim from one that drops from forty hours to twelve.
State it as a ceiling. This is the line that stops a project optimising for speed at the cost of accuracy.
Judgement, commentary, and exception review usually should. Naming them prevents a later argument about scope and reassures a sceptical reviewer.
Ninety days after go live, using this same worksheet. Put it in the project plan rather than in good intentions.
A regional grocery chain ran this exercise before a reporting rationalisation. The numbers below are the before and after, which is only possible because the before was recorded.
Will you record the baseline yourselves, or do you expect us to have it already?
What reconciliation checks will the new process carry that the current one does not?
If the error rate rises after go live, what is the remedy and who pays for it?
What does the re-measurement at ninety days involve, and who runs it?
Because obvious does not survive a budget review a year later, when the sponsor has changed and someone asks what the last project delivered. A recorded baseline turns the benefit into arithmetic. Without one, every claim of improvement is an opinion, and the next project is harder to fund.
About an hour of structured conversation with the people who run the cycle, plus a look at the last twelve cycles for the correction rate. It is the cheapest step in the whole project and the one most often skipped.
That is itself a finding, and a common one. Record the range rather than averaging it away. A cycle that takes between twelve and forty hours depending on who you ask usually means the process varies by person, which is a different problem from the one you thought you had.
Yes. Hours alone makes automation look purely like a cost saving, which invites a cheaper alternative. Including the correction rate reframes it as a control improvement, which is harder to argue against and closer to the truth.
It is most useful then. Knowing what the cycle costs is what tells you whether to automate, fix definitions, or change the process, and those are three different projects with different prices.