Cheryl Thompson Advisory Work With Me →

Return on time

What is the cost of doing nothing?

Most teams can't see what manual, repetitive work is costing them until they put a number on it. Move the inputs below and the figure updates as you go. Then read what the number leaves out, because that is usually where the larger value sits.

Start with the number of people doing this work. Change it to model a wider team.
participants
Reporting, searching, formatting, rekeying, chasing data. The figure is calculated at the conservative end of the range you pick.
How much of that repetitive time gets handed off to AI. Start conservative.
Salary plus benefits and overhead, divided by hours. $75 is a placeholder. Substitute your own figure.
$ per hour

Tier one · the defensible floor

Time recovered

$11,700

recovered per year, at the conservative end of your selected range

3
hours reclaimed per week
156
hours reclaimed per year

That is the equivalent of 3.9 full work weeks or roughly 0.1 additional headcount of capacity, without hiring.

These figures reflect time only. They do not count faster decisions, fewer missed follow-ups, or reduced rework, which are often worth more than the hours saved. Hour ranges are conservative starting estimates, validated against your own baseline, not assumed.

Tier two · where the real money is

Capacity redirected

The hours from Tier one do not disappear. They move. A buyer who stops chasing data spends that time negotiating a better contract. An engineer who stops rebuilding the same report spends it preventing the next failure.

This is where the real money is, and you are the one who can size it for your operation. We will not put a number on it, because the number depends on what your people do with the time they get back.

Tier three · the largest, least predictable

Risk avoided

One quality escape caught before it ships. One warranty issue spotted early. One recall avoided.

These are the biggest dollars on this page and the least predictable, so we do not model them. You already know what one of these is worth in your business. We name the category and leave the figure to you.

This number comes from one thing: time spent on work AI can carry

Bring this problem to an AI Working Session and leave with a personalized way to handle it and a roadmap for what comes next.

Book an AI Working Session