On manual processes: what they cost, how much of them can be automated and where to start. With the arithmetic in plain sight, so you can check it yourself.
15/09/2026
Copy the delivery note, number the invoice, send it, file it: four steps that repeat every week. What they cost a year depends on four figures, not on the feeling that "it takes an afternoon".
15/09/2026
An order isn't data until someone moves it from an email into the management system and replies confirming it. What that step costs depends on four figures, not on whether the inbox "is under control".
15/09/2026
Download the statement, compare it line by line, set aside what doesn't match: manual bank reconciliation isn't measured in transactions, it's measured in the time the exceptions take.
15/09/2026
Hours, materials and notes written by hand on the shop floor or on site, typed into the system by someone every evening. The real cost is in deciphering and correcting, not just in typing.
15/09/2026
The same details for a new customer get typed by hand into the CRM, the invoicing software and the mailing list. Tripling the typing also triples the places where a detail can be typed wrong.
15/09/2026
Every time off request arrives through a different channel, and someone copies it into a spreadsheet or a shared calendar. The cost isn't in approving it: it's in gathering requests and checking nothing overlaps.
11/09/2026
Four figures are enough to know what a process done by hand costs a year. When one is missing, the honest answer is not a number: it is the question still to be answered.