The usual claim for an automated process is hours saved. It is the weakest available measure: hard to verify, easy to inflate, and it does not tell you whether the business is better off.
Better measures
Did the outcome move? Response time, conversion rate, no-show rate, repeat rate: whatever the process was supposed to affect. Measure it before you change anything, and again afterwards. This requires the discipline to take a baseline, which is the step most often skipped.
Did the failure rate drop? How often the thing that was supposed to happen did not. Follow-ups missed, handovers dropped, updates not sent. This is frequently where the real value sits.
Is it actually being used? Volume through the process, and whether the manual workaround has disappeared. A team quietly maintaining the old method alongside the new one is the clearest possible signal that something is wrong.
What is escalating, and why? Escalation volume that falls over time means the design is fitting reality better. Escalation volume that rises means something has changed.
Take the baseline first
This is the whole discipline. Two weeks of measuring the current state before touching anything makes every claim afterwards verifiable, and it is almost always skipped because it feels like delay.
It is not delay. Without it you have opinions.
Give it time
Most processes look worse in the first fortnight because the team is adjusting and the edge cases surface. Judging at two weeks kills things that would have worked. Judging at three months with no measurement in between is too slow. Check at two weeks for breakage, judge at three months for value.
Be willing to conclude it did not work
Some automated processes do not pay for themselves. Saying so and removing them is a normal outcome, not a failure, and a business willing to reach that conclusion will get better results from everything else it tries, because it stops carrying dead weight.
The simplest version
One number, taken before, taken after, honestly. That is more than most businesses do and it is enough to make good decisions.