The caseyour numbers, not ours
The tools aren’t the problem. The joins are.
Most organisations already own software for every part of the work. What nobody sold them is the join between those parts — so the join becomes a person: someone who copies the number across, chases the status, and remembers where things are kept. It is real work, it is expensive, and it is on nobody’s job description.
the join is a person.
that is the cost
The same company, twice
What the connection is made of.
Joins made of people
21 connections. Every one of them a habit, a message or a memory.
Joins made of the base
7 connections. Identity, permission and history come with them.
Where the hours go
Four costs, none of them on an invoice.
Switching
Not the seconds spent moving between two windows — the minutes spent rebuilding what you were holding in your head when you left.
Entering it twice
The same fact typed into a form, a sheet and a message, because none of the three can see the other two.
Chasing
A question that has an answer somewhere, asked of a person because asking the system was never an option.
Starting
A new joiner learning where things are kept, which is knowledge about the tools rather than knowledge about the work.
Your numbers, not ours
Do the sum with your own figures.
We have deliberately not put an industry average in these boxes. Quoting somebody else’s survey at your team is how a business case ends up describing a company that isn’t yours. Put in what you believe is true, and the arithmetic is yours to argue with.
Nothing here is sent anywhere. The sum runs in this page, on the three numbers you typed.
if the number looks small,
this isn’t your problem yet
What we would agree to measure
Four numbers, taken before and after.
We would rather be held to measurements taken in your space than quote a result somebody else published. These are the four we would agree at the start, take a baseline on, and read again with you — including when they say the change was not worth it.
- Time to an answermeasured in your space
From asking “where is this” to having it, without a person in the middle. Sampled on real questions in your space, before and after — not on a demo script.
- Work done twicemeasured in your space
How often the same fact is entered in more than one place. Counted, because it is the one that compounds quietly.
- Days to usefulmeasured in your space
How long a new joiner takes to do the real job rather than learn where things live.
- Hours before an auditmeasured in your space
How much of an audit is assembling evidence and how much is answering the question. The record either exists or it is written afterwards.