One sprint is usually enough to remove the manual work entirely. Then you see what was hiding behind it.
Manual work is rarely the real problem. It's the symptom: a workaround that's calcified into a process because nobody had the time or the runway to fix it properly. Every week the spreadsheet gets updated, every month the numbers get stitched together, every quarter someone re-derives a report that used to exist and doesn't anymore. The work is constant and invisible in the P&L. But it's the first thing we go after.
Why the manual work matters
When a team is spending a day a week stitching numbers together, two things happen. First, the obvious one: a day a week of senior time is being spent on work a machine should be doing. Second, the less obvious one: nobody has the bandwidth to notice what else is broken, because everyone is heads-down doing the thing that shouldn't exist.
The moment the manual work goes, the second problem reveals itself. The same team that was spending a day a week on reports suddenly has a day a week to ask better questions. The questions surface opportunities the business didn't know it had.
What one sprint looks like
Fixed scope. Fixed price. Working output in weeks, fully documented, handed to your team. No lock-in. In many cases one sprint is enough to remove the immediate pain entirely. In others, it's the beginning of a longer relationship. That's a decision you make after seeing the work, not before.
If you already know the manual work that's bleeding your team, that's the right place to start.