Process improvement: shorter, steadier, cheaper to run

Process improvement is the work of making a process shorter, steadier and cheaper to run without rebuilding the business around it. Most of the gain comes from deleting steps, not speeding them up.

Where the time actually goes

In a typical office process, the people doing the work spend only a small share of the elapsed time actually working on the case. The rest is waiting: for an approval, for a reply, for someone to notice it is their turn. A process with 40 minutes of work can easily take three days to finish.

That gap between touch time and cycle time is where we look first, because it is usually the cheapest to close. Speeding up a task that takes ten minutes saves ten minutes. Removing a handoff that holds work for a day saves a day.

The order we work in

1. Eliminate. Which steps exist only because of an old rule or a system limit that no longer applies?
2. Simplify. Can three forms become one? Can a free-text field become a drop-down?
3. Combine or reorder. Checks that happen late often belong at the start, where a mistake is cheaper to fix.
4. Clarify ownership. Every handoff gets a named owner and a time limit. Handoffs are where most delay hides.
5. Automate what is left. Only after the above. Automating a broken process just makes it fail faster.

The full method, with the templates we use, is written up in our process improvement framework.

What we measure

• Cycle time: from the trigger to the finished outcome, including waiting.
• Touch time: time someone is actively working on the case.
• First-pass yield: the share of cases that finish without being sent back.
• Handoffs and re-keying: how many times the same information is entered by hand.

We agree the baseline with you before changing anything, so the result is a comparison and not an opinion.

Typical changes

These come up often enough to be worth naming: an approval step that adds nothing for low-value items, a status spreadsheet that duplicates a system, a form that is emailed as an attachment and retyped, a weekly report assembled by copy and paste. None of them needs a large project.

What we will not promise

We will not quote a percentage saving before we have seen your process. Ranges vary widely and depend on where you start. After the free review you get a written estimate with the assumptions visible, so you can check them.

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