How much does business process automation cost?

Integration surface, not features. Two systems with documented APIs and clean data is the cheap case. Four systems, one of which is trade software with no API and a vendor who does not return calls, is the expensive case, and the expense is in the bridge and the monitoring around it rather than in the automation itself.

The second driver is how settled the process is. If three people describe the quoting process three different ways, the first part of the work is deciding what the process is. That is worth doing, and it is not free.

Defined scope is quoted as a fixed fee, so you know the number before the work starts. Ongoing build, monitoring, and support run on a monthly retainer. You will know which one applies to your project before you commit to anything, and we will tell you when a project is small enough that you should not be paying a firm for it.

We do not price per automation or per seat. Counting automations rewards building a lot of small ones, which is the opposite of what most companies need.

Take the hours the process consumes each week, multiply by the loaded cost of the people doing it, and annualise. Then add the cost of the errors: the invoice that went out wrong, the lead that was never called, the job scheduled twice. That second number is usually larger and almost never gets counted.

If the annual figure does not comfortably exceed the build, the process is not the right one to start with. We would rather say that in the first meeting than find it in month three.