A financial services company decided to automate its payment processing operation and made a major investment in computer equipment that would automatically read payments and payment coupons, and post payment to the proper accounts. As part of the cost justification for this equipment, it was stated that after the equipment was operational the number of personnel required to manually process payments would be reduced from 40 to five, resulting in an annual labor savings of approximately $875,000. This labor savings would more than justify the cost of the new system. However, six months after the new system was installed and operational, the number of people manually processing payments had not been significantly reduced; in fact the number remained constant.