How much time can AI really save your business?

Short version: for a typical small business, five to twenty hours a week is realistic once a few quick wins are in, but the only number that matters is the one you work out on your own figures.

Why ranges are useless

Save 20 hours a week sells courses; it does not help you decide. Savings depend entirely on where your hours currently go. The useful exercise is to estimate your own.

The back-of-an-envelope sum

For each repetitive job, estimate the hours a week it takes, the hours AI could remove, and what an hour of that person's time costs. Hours saved times hourly cost times the weeks you work is your annual saving. Round down where you are unsure.

A worked example

Say Halden Trade Supplies spends 10 hours a week typing quotes. AI drafts cut that to 4, so six hours back. At, say, £25 an hour over 46 working weeks that is roughly £6,900 a year from one change. Do the same for chasing, invoices and enquiries and it adds up quickly.

Keep it honest

Only count hours you would actually redeploy, and always net off the tool cost. A saving you cannot use is not a saving.

Grafto's AI Tools Report does this maths for you across your whole business, hours and pounds, conservatively, from a short questionnaire, for £59.99.

Questions, or want a tool we don't have yet? Email hello@grafto.co.uk — a real person replies.