Find your cost – Step 3 – Find the time

Time… what a wonderful thing… we never seem to have enough. I often remind my wife before we had kids we used to sit on the couch at the end of the day and talk about how busy we were… then the kids came along and it “re-defined” busy.

Just to recap last week I wrote about defining automation. This week I am giving you the steps to find your cost, which will lead to the amount of time automation frees up. So far I have written about the five steps to finding your cost; Step 1: create a process map, Step 2 document the people in the process and today’s step 3 apply the time that it takes to each step.

As a reference we have been using the picture below to explain the flow.

As I have mentioned in each post, it is a good idea to list each step on a word document or spreadsheet.

For today’s topic once you have created the map and notated the people you will need to apply the amount of time that each person dedicates to the task. Just like in yesterday’s post. I can give you a little advice, if you ask a person how much time they spend of a certain task they may not be able to give you a good answer. If you change the questions to, “what percentage of your week” do you spend on this task, they will be able to give you a good number.

Once you have written the amount of time you are ready to go to the next step – money. I will write about that tomorrow.

Buy the book – The Argument to Automate – How Innovation Can INSPIRE Not Fire – click here to buy

(Also) To get your copy of The 8 Pitfalls of Accounts Payable Automation – click here to buy