We subscribed to a premium AI scheduling and meeting summaries tool for our entire thirty-person team. How do we calculate the concrete productivity ROI of this monthly software expense to decide if we keep it?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

Do not fall for vague metrics like improved collaboration or better alignment. To justify a recurring software expense, you must measure direct operational savings. You can calculate this by looking at time saved on specific, recurring tasks.

First, identify the exact administrative tasks this tool replaces, such as writing meeting recaps, creating action items, and manual calendar booking. Estimate the hours saved per employee each week. For a thirty-person team, if each person saves just one hour per week, that is thirty hours of recaptured capacity weekly.

Second, multiply those saved hours by the average hourly fully-burdened labor rate of your team. Compare this dollar value to the monthly cost of the software licenses. If the labor savings do not significantly exceed the software cost, the tool is a luxury, not an asset.

Third, track whether this saved time is actually reallocated to high-value activities on your Accountability Chart. Look at your weekly Scorecard metrics. If your sales reps are saving time on admin work, you should see an increase in outgoing sales calls or client meetings. If your Scorecard numbers are not moving, your team is simply filling the saved time with more administrative noise.