ROI and Business Case

[YourCompany.com] · Fulfilment Department · Prepared by FullSpec · [Today's Date]

This document sets out the financial case for automating your delivery exception handling process. It translates the time your team currently spends into an annual dollar cost, shows what changes after the automation goes live, and gives you a clear view of what you spend, what you save, and when the investment pays back. All figures are based on the process mapping session data and the assumptions recorded in Section 06.

01What the current process is costing you

The three highest-friction steps in your current process are listed below. These are the steps that consume the most time, create the most delay for customers, and are the most likely to fail or be skipped when the team is under pressure.

• Check Carrier Portals for Exceptions (25 min per cycle, repeated 2 to 3 times daily): The team has no automatic alert, so a Fulfilment Coordinator must manually log into each carrier portal and scan for failed, held, or undeliverable shipments. Exceptions sit unnoticed between checks, sometimes for several hours. The failure mode is that a customer opens a dispute or leaves a negative review before anyone on the team is even aware the parcel failed.
• Contact Carrier to Arrange Resolution (12 min per exception, highly variable): Once the exception is classified, the coordinator must contact the carrier by phone or web form to initiate a trace, address correction, or redelivery request. Hold times and delayed web-form responses mean this step has no predictable completion time. The failure mode is that the resolution window closes before the carrier acts, forcing a reship or refund that could have been avoided.
• Copy Exception Details to Spreadsheet and Update After Resolution (10 min to log + 4 min to update, per exception): Every exception requires two separate manual entries in the shared Google Sheet: once when spotted and again after resolution. Entries are inconsistent across team members and frequently incomplete. The failure mode is that the audit trail is unreliable, making it impossible to report accurately on exception rates, resolution types, or costs incurred.

02What changes after automation

After the automation is live, the Exception Triage Agent and Resolution Agent handle every step from carrier webhook receipt through to Shopify resolution and audit logging. Your team keeps exactly one decision point: a manager reviews and approves resolutions on high-value orders via a structured Slack prompt before the platform proceeds. Everything else runs without anyone touching it. Exceptions are caught the moment they occur, customers receive a tailored notification within minutes, and every outcome is logged automatically to Google Sheets. Your Fulfilment Coordinator reclaims nearly the entirety of those 6 hours each week.

03Before and after comparison

04Tool costs

05Net ROI summary

06Assumptions log

All savings figures assume a stable exception volume of approximately 90 per month and a consistent Fulfilment Coordinator loaded rate of $30/hour. If your exception volume grows, the automation scales without any additional staff cost, so savings increase proportionally. At 120 exceptions per month, for example, the staff cost avoided rises to approximately $12,480/year while the tool and build costs remain fixed, shortening payback to under 3 months. Conversely, if the hourly rate or volume is lower than assumed, the FullSpec team can rerun the calculator with your confirmed figures at any point before build sign-off. The tool cost assumption (that all six operational tools are already in use) should be verified before the final cost commitment is made: any tool not already licensed adds its own monthly cost to the ongoing total.