A field guide for owner-operators
Find where time and capacity disappear, price the burden honestly, and test whether a process change can earn its keep before you buy a tool.
Download the printable PDFA convincing demo is not a business case. Start with the work: where it waits, where people retype information, where errors return, and where a missing decision restricts output.
Recovered time creates capacity. It becomes financial value only when you use that capacity to lower cost, increase throughput, prevent loss, or complete more valuable work. Keep that distinction visible in every estimate.
This allocation keeps the portfolio useful today while leaving room to learn.
70%
Start with repetitive work your team already understands. Remove re-entry, handoffs, and waiting without changing the operating model.
20%
Once the underlying data is dependable, use it to spot constraints and decide where attention creates the most value.
10%
Reserve a small share for promising ideas whose value is not proven yet. Set a budget, an owner, and a stop condition.
Pattern 1
The same facts are typed into two or more systems.
Pattern 2
People interrupt one another to learn where work stands or what happens next.
Pattern 3
Reports, quotes, schedules, or updates are rebuilt from scattered inputs.
Pattern 4
Work sits because the owner cannot see the decision or lacks the needed context.
Pattern 5
A missing field, late handoff, or avoidable error creates rework downstream.
Follow one real task from trigger to completion. Record every handoff, wait, correction, and system used.
Measure how often the task occurs and how many total staff hours it consumes. Use a representative period, not a best day.
Multiply time by loaded labor cost, then add delay, rework, outside services, and missed capacity when those can be supported.
Estimate the portion a change can realistically recover. Keep review, exceptions, training, maintenance, and implementation in the model.
The calculator separates gross value, full first-year cost, net value, and estimated payback.
Browser-local worksheet
The starting values are a conservative, hypothetical example, not a promise. Replace them with observed numbers. Your entries stay in this browser tab and are not saved, submitted, or included in analytics.
Hours recovered
480
Gross annual value
$20,160
First-year cost
$9,100
First-year net
$11,060
Payback
21.7 weeks
One person is accountable for the workflow and can decide what good looks like.
Current time, frequency, error rate, or throughput can be measured before work starts.
The information needed is available, permitted, and consistent enough for the task.
Unusual cases go to a person with enough context to resolve them.
Users know what changes, how they will learn it, and who handles questions.
The team agrees in advance what evidence earns expansion, revision, or shutdown.
There is no universal cutoff. Compare the result with your cash position, risk, implementation capacity, and other uses of the money. A short estimate built on weak assumptions is less useful than a longer estimate based on observed work.
No. Recovered time creates capacity first. It becomes financial value only when the business uses that capacity to reduce cost, increase throughput, prevent loss, or complete higher-value work.
No. The calculator runs in your browser. Entries are not submitted, saved, or included in analytics.
Observe one repeated workflow, measure its total burden, and identify the operating constraint. Start with a bounded change that has a baseline, an owner, and a clear stop or scale rule.
We will examine the constraint, the evidence, and the economics with you. If there is no sound case for a change, we will say so.