In Governance of Enterprise IT (EGIT), benefits realization is about confirming that IT-enabled investments deliver measurable business value (i.e., benefits net of costs and adjusted for risk/time value where appropriate). For RPA specifically, the “realization of benefits” is best demonstrated by comparing actual, realized savings and performance improvements (e.g., reduced processing time, fewer manual errors, lower labor effort) against the actual costs to build, operate, and govern the automation. ROI is the most effective single measure among the options because it directly expresses that realized value-versus-cost relationship in a simple, decision-friendly way and is widely used for post-implementation value confirmation.

By contrast, NPV and IRR are primarily investment appraisal techniques used in business cases and portfolio decisions because they depend on multi-year forecasts, discount rates, and assumptions (which can diverge from actual outcomes). FRR is an operational accuracy metric (common in screening/classification contexts) and does not measure enterprise value realization from RPA.