Time from when the unit comes in until it is closed (average).
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[system or log]
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Cost per unit processed
Total process cost for the month ÷ units processed in the month. Includes licenses.
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Rework / error rate
Units corrected or returned ÷ units processed.
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Human review hours
Hours per month spent reviewing, validating or correcting.
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Volume per person
Units processed in the month ÷ people working in the process.
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Internal or external customer satisfaction
Average rating on one fixed question, with the same scale before and after.
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Illustrative example: "Purchase request cycle time: before 6 days, after 4. Review hours: before 20 h/month, after 34. The time went down, but review went up."
How to fill it in 25 minutes
Define the unit before the indicators. If the unit changes between before and after, the comparison is useless.
Pull the baseline from a system or log, not from memory. If none exists, measure for two weeks before starting.
Use the same formula, the same source and the same period in both measurements.
Name an owner per indicator: whoever pulls the data, not whoever presents it.
The most common mistake: measuring only cycle time and presenting the improvement without looking at the other five rows.
Read the whole table before concluding. One indicator improving while another worsens is a finding, not a success.
The line that is almost always missing
Human review hours. If they go up, the savings may have moved rather than disappeared: the team stops doing the work and starts reviewing what the tool does. Compare the hours freed with the new review hours before reporting any savings.
Vic Sol · Decision Desk · vicsol.org/resources/ · Free to use with attribution. This sheet structures a conversation; it is not legal, financial or audit advice.
Open the .docx in Word (or the .xlsx in Excel) or print it before the meeting.
Fill the fields with the team; leave the blanks visible, they are the discussion.
Close with one owner, one date and one next action. Nothing else.
Prompt
Generate this sheet for your case
Paste this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini together with your proposal, process or policy. It reproduces the sheet with your data and flags what is missing.
Act as an operations analyst with 15 years of experience who designs before-and-after dashboards for demanding committees and always checks whether an improvement in one indicator hid a cost in another.
Context I am giving you:
- Company / area: [ ]
- Process and the unit processed (invoice, request, ticket, contract): [ ]
- AI tool to be introduced and at which step: [ ]
- Data that already exists and in which system: [ ]
- People working in the process: [ ]
- Before and after data I already have, if any: [ ]
What I need: produce the one-page dashboard with exactly these six indicators, in this order:
1. Cycle time.
2. Cost per unit processed (including licenses).
3. Rework / error rate.
4. Human review hours.
5. Volume per person.
6. Internal or external customer satisfaction.
For each one fill in: Indicator | Formula | Before (baseline) | After (90 days) | Data source | Owner.
Then, in three lines: which indicators improved, which worsened, and whether human review hours absorbed part of the savings. If review hours went up, say so explicitly and compare them with the hours freed.
Output format: a Markdown table ready to copy into Excel, followed by the three lines. Maximum 400 words. No introduction.
Rules:
- Do not invent figures. If data is missing, write [DATA PENDING] and tell me how to get it.
- Use the same formula, source and period for before and after; if that is not possible, tell me.
- Mark every assumption as an assumption.
- If critical information is missing, ask me at most 3 questions before answering.
- Answer in plain, direct business English, with no sales adjectives.
What to check in the answer:
Does every indicator have a concrete data source, or does it say "to be defined"?
Did it check human review hours against the hours freed, or report the full savings?
Did it use the same unit and the same period for before and after?
Vic Sol