There are a couple of categories of value dimensions that will often be challenged by a prospect when you are building an ROI-based business case, and labor savings is at the top of that list. Labor savings tend to be tough to get customer buy-in for a number of reasons: Labor Savings are often spread across many people’s time and thus are considered soft or indirect benefits without real economic impact In order to capture the labor savings, the company often needs to take some action (reduce headcount, avoid hiring more workers, or reallocate employees to other value-added activities) Often the people that you are dealing with when building the business case are the people that will be impacted by the actions required (e.g., selling a technology solution to the IT department that reduces IT headcount may be difficult) Companies have been promised productivity gains many times, but rarely have they seen the results.
