01The problem
Nobody is idle, and the work still runs late.
Quotes go out later than they should. Enquiries sit unanswered because everyone is already on something else. You hire another person and the backlog stays the same size. Nobody can tell you which hours caused it. Most owners stop asking and treat the delay as the price of being busy.
02The alternative
Hours can be counted the same way money is.
Rent, stock, and wages all appear on a page somewhere. The hours your staff spend do not. This audit puts them on a page. Every task is listed with the hours it takes and what it costs you in a year. You then know what to fix first, and what to leave alone. The audit itself fixes nothing, and it takes four to eight weeks. It only tells you where the money should go next.
03Why it works
People tell an outsider what they will not tell you.
Your staff are too close to the work to see what it costs. Few will tell the owner where it fails, because someone chose the current way of doing it. We interview every role on its own. What each person says is never attached to their name. That is agreed in writing before the first interview.
04Where the hours go
What we look at.
- The day as the staff describe it
The owner's account of the working day and the staff account rarely match. We record the staff version, role by role.
- The work that repeats every week
Work that repeats is the only work a machine can take over. We time each repeating task, so you know what it costs you now.
- The places the work stops and waits
Hours disappear between one person and the next, or between two pieces of software. Nobody owns those gaps, so they last until somebody measures them.
- Work that no longer needs a person
Some of what your staff do by hand can run on a machine in your own office. Your records stay in the building. You pay for it once, instead of every month for as long as you use it.
05Ownership
The report is yours whether or not you hire us.
You are paying for the assessment, not for a build. The report is written so another firm could act on it without us. If nothing in your business is worth building, the report says that instead.
06FAQ
Questions we are asked most
Do I have to hire you to do the work afterwards?
No. The report is yours to keep and to act on. Some owners hand it to their own team, some pick three projects for us, some shop it around.
Will my staff be honest with you?
Usually more than they would be with you. We agree in writing that no answer gets traced back to a person. The report shows patterns, not names.