The short answer
An hour freed by automation is worth at least what it costs you, about €16.29 for an average employee in Latvia in 2026. That is the floor. If the freed hours add up to a role you no longer need to hire, each one is worth the same but the saving becomes real cash. If the hour goes to selling, it is worth the deal value times the close rate times your margin, which for many small companies is ten times the staff cost or more.
Which number is right depends on one question: what will the person do with the hour? Below are the three methods with the maths, and how to use them in a business case without fooling yourself.
The inputs
The cost figures come from What manual work really costs your company. The sales figures are an illustrative example: replace them with your own.
Sources: Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia, wages Q2 2026; PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries, Latvia. Sales figures are illustrative.
Three values for the same hour
The cost value is what most automation business cases use, and it is the safest. Its weakness is that an hour saved is not money saved unless something changes: fewer overtime hours, a hire postponed, or the time moved to work that earns.
The capacity value is the same money, made real. A growing company that would otherwise hire a second office assistant next spring saves the whole salary if the freed hours cover the work. It only counts once the hours add up to something you would really have paid for.
The revenue value is where the big numbers are, and the one most likely to be overstated. Sales people spend surprisingly little of their week selling: in Salesforce's State of Sales survey of 7,775 sales professionals, reps spent just 28% of their week actually selling. An hour of CRM admin removed from a salesperson can become an hour with a customer. But only if there are customers to talk to.
Which value should you use?
Use the cost value to decide whether an automation is worth building at all. If it pays back on staff cost alone, everything else is upside. Use the capacity value when you are about to hire for work that is mostly copying and checking. Use the revenue value only when demand is waiting: leads that get a reply the next day, quotes that take a week, a pipeline nobody has time to follow up.
Illustrative. The revenue line assumes the extra conversations exist; with an empty pipeline it is worth the cost value only.
The practical rule: build the business case on cost, and treat the rest as the reason to do it first. The savings calculator works out the cost value for each task, and Five automations that pay back in under three months shows where the hours usually are.
