The Lobbi Delivery Team
Operational Systems Engineering
The number one reason automation projects underdeliver is a miscalculated baseline. Teams estimate that a process takes 10 hours per week, build something that saves 8 of those hours, and declare success. until the maintenance overhead starts accumulating and the net figure comes down.
The Baseline Measurement Protocol
Before scoping any automation, The Lobbi instruments the current process. This means time-stamped activity logs, not estimates. We work with the team to capture actual duration for every task in the target workflow, including the exception handling, the error corrections, and the follow-up communications that never appear in the official process map.
The Four-Part ROI Model
A complete ROI model for automation has four inputs: (1) Current fully-loaded cost of the manual process, staff hours × blended rate, including management overhead. (2) Current error cost, rework hours + exception handling + downstream impact. (3) Projected maintenance cost of the automated solution, typically 15 - 25% of build cost annually for a well-scoped integration. (4) Build cost, amortized over the expected useful life of the solution (usually 3 - 5 years for integration work).
When these four inputs are populated with measured data, the decision becomes mechanical. Automation projects with a payback period under 18 months and an error reduction of over 60% are almost always the right call. Projects that look marginal on paper usually reveal scope problems, either the process isn't ready for automation, or the wrong layer is being targeted.
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