The hidden cost of manual processes in Galician SMEs
A Galician SME with 15 employees spends the equivalent of around €88,704 a year on manual tasks, process errors and internal coordination. Between €35,500 – €57,700 of that capacity is recoverable through digitalisation. It's an open, reproducible model, not a survey.
What "cost" means here
It's not an expense that shows up on an invoice. It's the value of the time the team spends on manual, duplicated or corrective tasks that a system would do on its own. That time is paid the same in payroll — but it doesn't produce. Recovering it means putting it towards selling, serving customers or growing, not hiring less.
Key findings
Annual cost of unproductive time in an SME with 15 employees
Recoverable per year through digitalisation (40–65% of the total)
Annual cost in a medium SME with 40 employees
Model assumptions
Three Galician SME profiles with conservative parameters. These are the input figures — you can swap in your own in the calculator.
Result: cost by SME size
Annual cost of time spent on manual processes, and the share recoverable through automation (a 40–65% range depending on the degree of digitalisation reached).
Translated into people
Those hours aren't an abstract expense. In an SME with 15 employees, the time spent on manual tasks is equivalent to having 1.9 full-time people (75 hours every week) doing nothing but recoverable administrative work. In a medium SME with 40 employees, that's 5 full-time people (200 hours every week).
Annual cost of manual processes (€)
Where does that cost come from?
Breakdown for the reference profile (SME with 15 employees). The bulk isn't isolated errors, but the hours the team spends every week on tasks a system would do on its own.
Methodology
This report is an open, reproducible estimation model, not a survey. It calculates the cost of manual processes by adding up three monthly items:
- Manual tasks: number of employees × hours lost per person per week × cost per hour × 4 weeks.
- Errors and incidents: incidents per month × cost per hour × 2 hours average resolution time.
- Coordination and management: weekly hours of coordination, reporting and supervision × cost per hour × 4 weeks.
The recoverable share is expressed as a range from 40% to 65% of that cost, not as a single figure: 40% is reasonable when automating the most repetitive tasks, and 65% is the ceiling when operations are fully centralised in a single system. What's recovered isn't a headcount cut, but time moving from administrative tasks to revenue-generating ones.
The figures are deliberately conservative: the cost per hour (€20-22) is in line with the average hourly labour cost in Spain according to the INE's Quarterly Labour Cost Survey (adjusted downward for Galicia); 4 weeks per month are counted (not 4.33); and only 2 hours of resolution per incident are assumed. In intensive operations — warehousing, distribution, services with high order volumes — the real hours lost tend to be higher than the model's.
Anyone can reproduce or adjust the calculation with their own figures in the Rowan Tech ROI calculator.
Data for press
Figures free to use with attribution to the source. For further detail, an interview or sector-specific data, write to us at hola@rowantech.es.
Citable figures
- A Galician SME with 15 employees spends the equivalent of around €88,704/year on manual processes and coordination.
- Of that figure, between €35,500 – €57,700/year (40-65%) is recoverable through digitalisation.
- In a medium SME with 40 employees, the annual cost rises to €234,432 — equivalent to 5 full-time people dedicated solely to manual tasks.
- The largest item isn't errors, but repetitive manual tasks (85%).
How to cite
Rowan Tech (2026). The hidden cost of manual processes in Galician SMEs. Retrieved from https://rowantech.es/en/informe-coste-procesos-manuales-pymes-galicia
What an SME can do with these numbers
The first step isn't buying software, it's measuring. Work out your exact figure with the ROI calculator and, if your operations justify it, consider centralising in a single system: an ERP for SMEs, warehouse management software if the bottleneck is logistics, or custom development when no off-the-shelf option fits.
If you're not sure where to start, digital consulting with a prior diagnosis tells you what part of that cost is really recoverable in your case before you invest.
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