I find where the day actually goes in a business, then take the worst of it off the people doing it.
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 have spent the last few years doing that at Digizoo, inside Australia's largest private freight rail operator.
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 the tool that took that off them. 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.
About 150 hours saved a year, each
Almost all of it from not looking up and re-typing phone numbers.
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 the job they were hired for, deciding what moves next rather than hunting for information about it.
That is a number I timed myself rather than one a system was metering, and I would rather tell you that than dress it up.
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.
The typing, the chasing, the copying out of one screen and into another. Here is roughly what I would expect that to add up to. If it is wrong, the gap between my number and yours is the conversation worth having. The hours are only how you measure it. What changes is that whoever is doing it gets the day back for the work you actually pay them for: the customer waiting on the phone, the order that needs a decision, the follow-up nobody got to.
| My guess | Yours | |
|---|---|---|
| Hours a day spent moving information by hand | 1.5 | |
| Working days a year | 250 | |
| Hours a year | 375 |
If my number is wrong, I would like to know by how much. If it is close, there is something here worth twenty minutes of your time.
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.
aidan.puse@gmail.com
0490 101 804
Whichever is easier.
Leave a message any time and I will ring back that evening.