The value of automation
Say you're looking at options to automate a tedious manual task.
How can you know whether the value of that automation is worth the cost of building it?
First you have to know (or at least estimate) it's value.
You can get a fairly simple estimation just by asking yourself a few questions:
What exactly is the task you want to automate?
How long does it take to perform this task once?
How many times (in a week, month, or year) does this task need to be done?
What would you be paying an employee, intern, or contractor to perform that task manually?
For a little more nuance, you could also ask:
How often are human errors made in this manual process?
What is the cost (translated somehow into dollars and cents) of such mistakes?
If you can answer those questions, a little multiplication and addition will tell you how much of your organization's limited budget could be saved by automating this task.
That's a pretty good measure of the value.
Naturally, estimates aren't perfect, by definition.
But assuming it's done with reasonable care, it's a useful measure of what you can hope to achieve.
And that, all by itself, can give you some clues about whether it's worth pursuing.
All the best,
Allen