Academy / COURS VOCE®/ D05
COURS VOCE® D05 | COST

How much does a truly completed task cost?

Track 01 · Managers and Business Leads · English edition

What you will learn to do

calculate an operational cost per accepted case, with an explicit scope.

Fictional pedagogical case: a premium services company is preparing to automate its refunds.

The course

The team announces that producing a response costs 0.08 euros. Management compares this amount to the cost of human processing. The comparison overlooks several steps.

A generation may need to be redone. An employee may verify the proposal. Some requests remain unfinished and return to a processing queue. The operation of the service also involves fixed expenses and maintenance time.

To compare two methods, the company must define what it calls a completed case. In this track, it is a case that has been processed, verified, and accepted according to the selected criteria. The number of generated responses is not that number.

Let's take a fictional month. The service receives 1.000 cases. Variable expenses are 200 euros, fixed expenses allocated to the service are 300 euros, and human review represents 50 hours at 30 euros. In total, 900 cases are accepted. The cost used in this calculation is 2.000 euros for 900 cases, which is approximately 2.22 euros per accepted case.

This calculation remains incomplete if significant expenses have been excluded. The company must specify how it handles the initial integration cost and subsequent reworks. It must compare services of similar quality and scope.

Released time is not automatically a cash saving. It may allow for processing more requests or improving another activity. The economic result depends on this usage.

Your decision

The following month, expenses excluding human review remain at 500 euros. Control takes 70 hours at 30 euros and 800 cases are accepted. Calculate the cost and propose a verification.

Formulate an answer before opening the answer key.

Open the reasoned answer key

The cost is 500 + 2.100 = 2.600 euros. Divided by 800 cases, it reaches 3.25 euros per accepted case.

It is necessary to examine why the control time increased and why fewer cases were accepted. The composition of requests may have changed. The figure alone does not allow for attributing the increase to the model.

Production to keep

definition of the completed case, positions included, and calculated cost.

Evaluation criterion

The calculation is based on accepted cases and specifies its scope.

Sources and references

The case and the answer key are VOCE pedagogical constructions; the references do not validate the effectiveness of this training.

How to follow a course

Read. Make a decision. Examine the answer.

Start with the proposed case. The answer explains the reasoning and its limitations. References allow for further study.

42 seconds · VOCE Audio
Read the explanation

Welcome to VOCE courses. Choose a course from the catalogue: it will open on a dedicated page. Read the objective and the explanation, then work on the proposed case before opening the answer. Each course contains fewer than five thousand characters, along with its references. You can follow the ten steps of the first track, or start with the subject useful to your company. For training centres, the evaluation criteria indicate what the participant must be able to do. The themes of the future Campus are presented separately from the courses already available. They will also cover gigafactories, robotics, and the light workforce.