1
Volume — know your baseline
How many orders does your team actually handle?
Inbound order emails per day
Include all channels: direct email, shared inbox, forwarded from sales
orders
2
Time — track the real minutes
From email open to confirmation sent. Include reading, product lookup, ERP entry, and follow-up.
Total minutes per order
Full end-to-end time: reading the email, matching product codes, entering into ERP, sending the confirmation. Time 10 orders and average.
min avg
Daily processing hours
Total minutes × daily orders ÷ 60
—hrs / day
3
Errors — find where things go wrong
Review the last 3 months of corrections and amendments.
Order errors per month
Wrong quantity, wrong product, wrong price, wrong date
errors
Average cost per customer-facing error
Returns, credit notes, reshipments, resolution time
CHF
4
Capacity — what it actually costs
The real staff cost of doing this work manually.
Number of people processing orders
Include anyone who touches inbound orders, even partially
people
Fully loaded hourly cost per person
Salary + taxes + benefits ÷ 220 days ÷ 8 hrs
CHF/ hr
Annual processing cost (staff time)
Daily hours × hourly cost × 220 working days
—CHF / yr
Annual error cost
Errors/month × cost/error × 12
—CHF / yr
Ready to see what changes?
Read the full breakdown — and how operations teams are approaching this differently.
Read the article →