Estimate the cost of exceptions in an automation business case

Automation economics often count the work removed and ignore the difficult cases left behind. Those exceptions can take longer, require senior reviewers and create queues that users must operate.

Build the decision artifact

Measure current case volume, handling time, labor or opportunity cost and error rework. For the proposed workflow, estimate straight-through rate, exception rate, minutes per exception, platform and support cost, adoption ramp and change effort. Use scenarios and state whether taxes, capital, vendor minimums or transition overlap are included.

The commercial leadership lab makes the artifact inspectable with authored inputs:

from leadership_cases import exception_cost_case

result = exception_cost_case()
assert result["manual_cost"] == 12000
assert result["exception_cost"] == 5400
assert result["proposal_cost"] == 7200
assert result["gross_saving"] == 4800

With fictional units, the manual baseline costs 12,000. Three hundred exceptions at twelve minutes cost 5,400, and platform cost raises the proposal to 7,200, leaving 4,800 gross saving. The fixture includes exceptions rather than assuming all 700 straight-through cases determine value.

Protect the decision from weak evidence

An average exception hides distinct types. Sample them, classify root cause and model whether volume changes after deployment. Some exceptions are desirable abstentions that prevent costly errors; optimizing them away blindly damages safety.

Keep these artifacts for review:

• baseline time-and-volume sample
• exception taxonomy and handling model
• low/base/high scenario sheet
• assumptions, exclusions and sensitivity analysis

This practice aligns with the discovery, productisation, client enablement, technical leadership and capstone sequence in the FDE for Professionals course. The course link describes the pathway; the local scenario is fictional and does not claim a client engagement, investment result, hiring decision or certificate.

Practice task

Recalculate the fixture at 500 exceptions and fifteen minutes each. Identify the break-even exception rate before proposing a pilot.

Continue learning

This article is part of the Commercial judgement and delivery leadership sequence. Use the neighbouring tasks when you need the prerequisite or the next application.

• Review the prerequisite or neighbouring task in Build a value tree that separates adoption from model quality.
• Continue with Run a client discovery workshop with conflicting stakeholders.

Reference: GOV.UK Service Manual: Measuring Success.