Sources

McKinsey Global Institute. Technical automation potential by activity type: predictable physical 81%, data processing 69%, data collection 64%, unpredictable physical 26%, stakeholder interaction 20%, applying expertise 18%, managing others 9%. About half of all work activities could be automated with demonstrated technology. Our base rates.

McKinsey & Company. Generative AI plus other technologies could automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70% of employees' time. Raised the potential for collecting data (68% to 79%) and processing data (73% to 90.5%). We use this to adjust language-heavy tasks upward.

McKinsey Global Institute. Activities accounting for up to 30% of hours worked in the US economy could be automated by 2030. Office support is among the most exposed occupation groups.

O*NET Resource Center (US Department of Labor). Task lists for each occupation. We use them to check that each entry's task breakdown matches how the work is actually described, not how a vendor describes it.

Salesforce. Survey of 5,500 sales professionals in 27 countries. Reps spend 70% of their time on non-selling tasks (72% in the 2022 edition). Self-reported.

Harvard Business Review. Firms that tried to contact a lead within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify it as those that waited even an hour longer, and over 60 times as likely as those that waited 24 hours or more. Average first response time in the audit: 42 hours.

Asana. Knowledge workers spend 58% of their day on 'work about work': chasing status, searching for information, switching apps. Survey-based.

Gartner. Poor data quality costs organisations an average of $12.9 million a year. Enterprise-weighted; small firms lose less in dollars but a similar share of sales time.

Gallup. Only 12% of employees strongly agree their organisation does a great job of onboarding new employees.

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. Text reminders increased attendance compared with no reminder, and performed about as well as phone-call reminders at lower cost. Healthcare setting; the mechanism transfers to sales and service bookings.

EY (via Business Wire). Survey of 508 payroll staff at US firms with 250 to 10,000 employees. One in five payrolls contains errors; each costs $291 on average; the average organisation makes 15 corrections per pay period.

GBTA Foundation. Average expense report costs $58 and 20 minutes to process; 19% contain errors or missing information, each taking about 18 more minutes to fix. Dated, but still the most-cited benchmark.

Ardent Partners. Average cost to process an invoice is roughly $9.40 to $9.90; best-in-class teams sit near $2.70. Best-in-class cycle time about 3 days. Figures relayed through vendor summaries; treat as ranges.

411 Locals. Tracked calls to 85 small businesses across 58 industries for 30 days: only 37.8% reached a live person. Vendor-run and small sample; we cite it as directional, and note a larger dataset (Liquid11) put missed calls nearer 22% across all company sizes.

Microsoft. Survey of 31,000 people in 31 countries. 62% struggle with too much time spent searching for information; 68% say they lack enough uninterrupted focus time.

Zapier. Survey of US small and mid-size business employees: 94% perform repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Vendor survey; directional.

Bain & Company (Frederick Reichheld). A 5% increase in customer retention lifts profits by 25% to 95%. Old and industry-dependent, but the direction is well supported.

US Federal Trade Commission. Bans, among other things, company-controlled review sites that claim to be independent. Why this Index discloses CXJ Labs ownership on every page.

Bill Gates. Source of the rule that automation magnifies whatever process it is applied to, efficient or not.

Harvard Business Review (Peter F. Drucker). Source of the line that nothing is so useless as doing efficiently what should not be done at all.

CXJ Labs. Our own estimates. Task shares and minutes are editorial judgements anchored on the sources above, not survey results. See the methodology page.