2026-07-22 · 2 min read
Where the time actually leaks in a small firm
Not in the work itself. In the twenty minutes between an enquiry arriving and somebody deciding what to do with it — repeated forty times a week.
Ask an owner where the day goes and you will hear "meetings" or "admin". Watch the same week and you will see something narrower: the handover points. An enquiry arrives. Somebody reads it. Somebody decides who answers. Somebody looks up what this customer bought last time. None of that is work — it is the friction before work.
Count it once, honestly
Take three numbers off the top of your head and write them down:
- how many enquiries arrive in a week
- how many minutes pass between arrival and first reply
- what an hour of your team costs you
Multiply. Most owners are surprised twice: first by the total, then by how long they have been paying it without noticing. The number is usually not dramatic — it is steady, which is worse.
The three places it hides
Retyping. A price list in a spreadsheet, an order in an e-mail, an invoice in another system. Every boundary between them is somebody copying text from one screen to another, and every copy is a chance to get a digit wrong.
Looking things up. What did we quote this customer in March? Which part did we fit last time? If the answer lives in somebody's memory or in a folder only they understand, the whole company waits for that person to be free.
Remembering. Following up on a quote, an inspection date, a renewal. Nothing here is difficult. It just has to happen on a specific day, and a human being is a poor calendar.
What to automate first, and what to leave alone
Start with the thing that repeats identically. If ten enquiries a week need the same four steps, that is worth automating. If every job is genuinely different, leave it — you would spend a month describing exceptions and end up with a system nobody trusts.
Do not automate judgement. The price, the priority, the decision to say no to a customer — those stay with people. Automate the retyping around them.
The honest test
After a month, one question tells you whether it worked: has anybody gone back to the spreadsheet? If they have, the system was built for the process you described rather than the one you actually run. That is fixable, but only if you ask the question.