How to achieve a measurable ROI from resource management software?
Investing in resource scheduling software is a significant step towards digital transformation in public sector organisations and private enterprises. The question of return-of-investment always accompanies this step. What is the ROI of my digital transformation investment going to be?
One of the most popular answers to this question is “it depends”. But it doesn’t have to be. There are fewer variables with the surging of cloud technologies and saas resource management solutions than before. Therefore it’s easier to measure an ROI.
If we have a business case – for example, optimising resource utilisation of field inspections or reducing the total travel time on assessment, and if we know where to start, we can expect a return on investment within a brief period – from weeks to 6 months. And the ROI can be precisely measured at an early stage thanks to a well-developed proof-of-concept.
Related: Why do you need a proof of concept?
“With our cloud-based resource management platform, our customers can measure how much the automation is going to cost per transaction.”
Lesley Franck, director of Canalix Ltd., Inspection management and resource optimisation platform.
Based on case studies with customers of Canalix, we outlined some of the most common automation improvements we brought to our customers:
- 80% of our customers say that Jobtimizer improve their resource optimisation
- 85% say Jobtimizer reduced the total travelled distance between jobs
- 90% believe that Jobtimizer enabled them to spend more time on complex tasks and decision making
How Jobtimizer works?
Since the ROI of digital automation depends on the business case and where you start from, here are our three tips on achieving a better return on investment when adopting digital automation solutions for resource optimisation.
Optimise resource utilisation with a cloud-first strategy
The industries that were early adopters of automated workflows had their own data centres. Any future problems require the service team on-site, and troubleshooting could take ages. With a cloud-based resource management platform, this is not a problem anymore. The software supplier has complete visibility on the automation and can control everything in the cloud. That itself allows customers to rely on measurable ROI.
The cloud-first strategy is not related exclusively to measurable ROI benefits. It is also a case for continuous optimisation. That can eventually drive a more significant ROI in time that spreads beyond the first 12 or 24 months.
- Scale up the volume of work
To produce a measurable ROI from resource management software, you need large amounts of data and rules. For instance, Canalix offers a resource optimisation product that can create schedules for complex operations and reduce resource scheduling efforts from days to minutes. But to produce a measurable ROI from this, a large amount of data is needed and rules that rarely change. That’s why scaling up the volume of work at the early stage of adoption is an excellent tip to achieve measurable ROI on automation.
A measurable ROI is a great benefit for businesses looking to invest in workflow automation to achieve resource optimisation. But this is not the only benefit. In an interview with McKinsey, Leslie Wilcocks, professor of technology, work, and globalisation at the London School of Economics, captures the business benefits of process automation.
“The major benefit we found in the 16 case studies we undertook is a return on investment that varies between 30 and as much as 200 percent in the first year. But it’s wrong to look just at the short-term financial gains—particularly if those are simply a result of labour savings.”
3. Don’t ignore the soft ROI metrics.
Soft ROI is part of the benefits that are hard to measure and quantify. That does not mean that you should ignore them.
Among the soft business benefits of automation are:
- Improved compliance. For example, in highly regulated industries such as insurance, automation is a fast solution to the problem with compliance.
And last but not least:
- Improved customer service.
- Improved productivity.
It’s hard to put a monetary value on these benefits, but organisations that get automation right will surely experience these benefits. How to track any correlation between automation and improved customer experience? Perform surveys and ask questions. It will give you a good idea of your automation efforts.
Real-world examples from Jobtimizer’s use case scenario:
Total travelled time
Before automation:
Our customer’s number of finished jobs depended directly on travel time. While the backlog of casework increased, they had to find a better way to utilise their resources. To improve the resource utilisation for them, meant to reduce the total travel time between inspection jobs.
After the automation:
Total time spent on travel was reduced by 40%. Our customer was able to perform more tasks with the same resources for the same amount of time.
Scheduling efforts
Before automation:
Our customer had an internal team that was responsible for the manual processing of hundreds of incoming claims and then planning the inspection schedule.
After automation:
Resource scheduling efforts reduced from days to minutes.
Do you want to explore yourself the features and benefits of our resource management solution? Then book a quick 15-min product tour by filling the form below:
