How to measure a pilot

Measure the same task before and after.

Choose a representative period and record the number of tasks, handling time, review time and exceptions. Compare equivalent work at the same quality standard. A faster draft is useful only if the final result is still fit for its purpose.

Include human checks.

Measure the time needed to verify fields, fix mistakes and resolve ambiguous cases. Include failures, retries and the portion of work that remains manual. Avoid treating the best demonstration run as typical performance.

Separate capacity from cash.

Releasing ten hours gives a team more capacity. It does not automatically reduce payroll or create revenue. Financial benefit needs an explicit mechanism, such as avoided external spend or attributable additional output.

Use complete costs.

Include setup, subscriptions, API usage, maintenance and oversight. State the period, inputs and exclusions alongside an ROI estimate. Report measured outcomes separately from forecasts.

Prepared by SOLA VIA as general project-planning guidance. Examples are illustrative.