Did the Automation Deliver?
Twelve recurring tasks timed before and after an automation rollout. The paired test makes the 23-minute average saving certain, the sheet turns it into a 13-week payback, and the two tasks that got worse are the real finding.
Work Starter Statistics free
After you install, this is the model to open.
Did the Automation Deliver?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
What it does
Twelve recurring tasks, each timed in the month before the automation went in and timed again after, minutes per run, same task on the same row. The averages say 38.75 minutes fell to 15.75, a saving of 23 minutes per run. Click Run: the paired test returns t of 4.49 on 11 degrees of freedom with a two-tail p-value of 0.00091, so a saving this size across these twelve tasks is real and not measurement luck.
That is the sentence to send whoever paid for the build. Two rows argue back, and they are the most useful rows on the sheet. Meeting notes went from 20 minutes to 24: the automation writes a draft that someone still rewrites, so it added a review step instead of removing one. Email triage barely moved, 25 to 22. A rollout that wins on average still loses on individual tasks, and those two rows are where the next iteration should start, not the ten that already work.
The money is on the right of the sheet and none of it is typed in: 276 minutes a week across the twelve tasks is about 239 hours a year, worth $11,960 at the $50 an hour in the value cell, against 60 hours to build and roll out, which pays back in about 13 weeks. Change the two cost cells to your own numbers and the payback recalculates. Three honest cautions before the victory lap.
The after column was measured in the weeks right after rollout, when everyone is watching and the automation is running on the cases it was built from; time the same tasks again in a quiet month before quoting the annual figure. The build row should keep growing as maintenance hours accrue, because an automation that needs an hour a week of tending gives back a quarter of this saving.
And the test says the time fell, not that the automation caused it: a rollout usually ships alongside process cleanup, and the timesheet cannot tell those apart. If your durations are heavily skewed, a few runs that take hours while most take minutes, run Wilcoxon Signed-Rank on the same two ranges instead: it asks the same question without assuming the savings are bell-shaped.
To use your own rollout, put one task per row, the before timing and the after timing in their columns for the same task in the same order, widen both ranges, and be as honest in the build-hours cell as you were in the timings.
The model
It arrives on a tab called Template: Did the Automation Deliver, carrying these columns:
- Task
- Minutes per run, before
- Minutes per run, after
- Minutes saved
- =AVERAGE(D2:D13)
with the model computed beside the data:
| Minutes saved per week, all twelve | 276 |
| Hours saved per year | 239.2 |
| Yearly value of the time ($) | 11,960 |
| Payback (weeks) | 13.04 |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- Which big clients are quietly the expensive ones?Which Kinds of Client Do We Actually Have?
- Is the bigger fee the better client?Which of Two Clients Should Get the Slot?
- Score four early-warning signals against client renewal with a correlation matrix, so you know which metric actually predicts churn. Free Sheets template.What Moves With a Client Leaving?
- Which stream will move the delivery date?When Does This Engagement Actually Finish?
- How many hours will this scope actually take?What Should This Engagement Cost to Deliver?
- What if the partner with the fee book leaves?What Does Losing One Person Cost?
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Statistics in Google Sheets.