Finally got my boss to approve a new software tool by showing the cost in saved hours

I tracked my team's time on manual reports for a month, which was about 15 hours total, and compared it to the $30/month subscription. He signed off the same day. Has anyone else found a specific metric that finally got budget approval for something?

3 comments

3 Comments

wadeyoung2mo ago

But what if that 15 hours is actually useful time? Maybe the manual process forces your team to spot errors or learn the data better. A cheap tool might just create a new problem to manage.

skylershah1mo ago

Remember thinking exactly like @wadeyoung, that manual work built some kind of deeper knowledge. Then I watched my team burn a weekend on a report, just for the client to change one number and make us do it all again. That manual "learning" was just memorizing a process that broke all the time. A simple tool fixed the process so they could actually learn how the data works, not just how to move it around. The real problem to manage is wasting time on stuff a computer can do faster and without getting tired.

mitchell.shane2mo agoMost Upvoted

Oh sure, @wadeyoung, let's pay people to stare at spreadsheets for 15 hours to maybe find a typo. That's like saying walking to work is useful because you might spot a penny on the sidewalk. My team could actually learn something useful with that time, like how to avoid these manual tasks forever.