7 signs a workflow is costing you a full-time salary.
Seven signs, plus a calculator that tells you what one recurring process actually costs you in hours, full-time roles, and dollars a year. Here is how to spot it, and the arithmetic to run yourself.
What a recurring workflow actually costs
A full-time role runs about 2,080 hours a year, which works out to 40 hours a week. That number does not care how the hours are distributed. Eight hours a day from one person and ninety minutes a day from five people cost you the same thing. Once a recurring workflow crosses 40 hours a week across everyone who touches it, you are funding a full-time position that produces no new work.
Most operators never run that number, because the hours are spread thin enough to look like ordinary overhead.
Seven things to look for
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The same information gets typed in twice
Someone reads a value out of one system and types it into another. Re-keying is where errors enter, and the errors cost more to find than the typing cost to do.
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It has a standing block on someone's calendar
When work gets scheduled, it has stopped being a task and become a job. Look for the recurring block that nobody questions anymore.
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One person is the only one who can do it
There is a name attached to the process. When that person takes a week off, the work either stops or somebody spends a day relearning it from scratch.
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You have shopped for software and nothing fits
Off-the-shelf tools handle about 80% of how you work. The last 20% is where your margin lives, and it is the part no vendor is going to build for you.
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The error rate is already budgeted for
Nobody is alarmed by the mistakes anymore. There is a rework step, a double-check, or a person whose job partly consists of catching what the process gets wrong.
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Volume and headcount move together
Every time order volume goes up, you add a person. If your growth plan reads like a hiring plan, there is no leverage anywhere in the process.
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You asked what a custom build would cost and the number ended the conversation
Quotes for this kind of work run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, on timelines measured in quarters. That number is honest for the way most firms build. It is worth knowing that a smaller and faster path exists, because I have been on both sides of that quote.
If three or more of these describe the same workflow, it is worth an hour.
Bring the process. I will tell you honestly whether it is worth automating, and what it would take. If the answer is that you should not build it, I will say that too.
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