What I keep finding
Most businesses run on a few systems that do not quite talk, and people close the gaps by hand. It is never one big broken thing. It is twenty small ones, each too minor to raise, and together they are most of somebody's day. Nobody is given that work and nobody counts it, so it never turns up as a problem. It turns up as a busy person.
I spent the last few years as a specialist brought into Australia's largest private freight rail operator: finding the work they still did by hand, then taking it off them.
A tool I built
- What changed Looking up and re-typing became one tap.
- For whom About thirty planners, every day.
- How much it saved About four working weeks a year, each.
- What it bought Time back on the job they were hired for.
Seven systems that did not talk to each other, and about thirty planners in the middle moving information across by hand:
- check one screen
- ring a depot
- write it on paper
- type it into the next system
I designed one screen they could work from: where every train was, what state it was in, and who to ring about it, instead of seven systems and a phone. They still use it every day.
The feature they used most was the simplest thing in it. Instead of looking up a phone number and typing it in, you tap the name and it calls. That is the whole feature.
What it saved them
About 150 hours saved a year, each
One trivial feature, and it was the one that gave the time back. That is the argument in miniature: the day is made of things too small to be worth raising.
Those hours went back into deciding what moves next, rather than hunting for information about it.
It is a big operation, but what gave the time back was small, and it would be small in any business. Yours is the number that actually matters.
Let us talk, either way
If my number is wrong, I would like to know by how much. If it is close, there is something here worth talking about.
Reply to my email, or ring me on 0490 101 804. The review costs nothing: twenty minutes on the phone, and I work out what those hours are worth over a year on your figures rather than mine. If it turns out it is not worth fixing, I will say so.
None of this is ever urgent, which is exactly why it is still there. It will still be there next year unless somebody stops and looks at it.