The hidden cost of "It only takes a few minutes"
One phrase I hear regularly when reviewing business processes is:
"It only takes a few minutes."
A typical process might look like this:
Someone receives an email.
They update another system.
They send a confirmation email.
The whole thing might only take five minutes. Not a big deal, right? But what if it happens ten times a day? That's almost an hour every day. Over a year, that can quickly add up to hundreds of staff hours spent moving information from one place to another.
Maybe the process is related to:
Entering customer details into multiple systems
Updating a spreadsheet after receiving an email
Creating invoices from information that's already stored elsewhere
The challenge is that these costs rarely appear on a profit and loss statement, and no invoice arrives labelled: "Manual Process Inefficiency: $8,000"
Instead, the cost is hidden in dozens of small tasks repeated every day. One of the first things I look for when reviewing a business is repetitive administrative work. Not because people are doing anything wrong. But because technology is often capable of handling the movement of information while people focus on work that actually requires human judgement, experience and decision-making.
What surprises many business owners is that these improvements often don't require expensive new software or major disruptions. In many cases, the answer is simply making better use of the systems and information already available.
If your team spends a lot of time moving information between emails, spreadsheets and business systems, it may be worth taking a closer look at the process.
Sometimes the biggest opportunity isn't buying new software. It's removing unnecessary steps from the processes you already have.
What are the "five minute" tasks in your business that get repeated every day?
