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Audit one workflow

Walk a real process, step by step, and watch where the hours actually go. The output is one named step to start with, and the reason it beat everything else on your list.

  • FREE
  • NO EMAIL
  • 5 MINUTES
  • NOTHING SAVED OR SENT

Now walk it. One row per step, in the order it actually happens. The three below are an example: overwrite them.

01
That is2.7 hrs a week
02
That is4.0 hrs a week
03
That is5.0 hrs a week

THIS WORKFLOW EATS

11.7

hours a week on Processing a supplier order, across 3 steps

57% is machine work

WORKED EXAMPLE, NOT YOUR ANSWERS

A supplier order arrives by email. Somebody opens it and digs out the reference, types the order into the accounts system, then waits for a manager to approve anything over £500. Three steps, eleven and a half hours a week.

The wait looks like the villain at twenty-five minutes a time, but it happens twelve times a week while the typing happens forty. Re-keying is what to fix, and it is the one step of the three a machine can do unaided.

Open the email and find the order
2.7 hrs
Type the order into accounts
4.0 hrs
Wait for approval over £500
5.0 hrs
Of that, machine work
57%

The five kinds of step

All five, printed here rather than hidden in the tool, so you can argue with the classification instead of accepting it.

  1. 01Re-keyingTyping in something that already exists, in digital form, somewhere else.Automate it end to end. This is the cheapest, safest thing to hand over, and it is usually the largest single line in an audit.
  2. 02HuntingOpening three systems to gather what one step needs before it can happen.Bring the data to one place. Often the fix is a connection between two systems, not a new tool.
  3. 03WaitingThe clock runs and nobody is working. It sits with a manager, a client or another team.Automate the chase, not the work. A reminder that goes out on its own, or a queue that shows who is sitting on what.
  4. 04CheckingVerifying work somebody else already did, because it is sometimes wrong.Fix the upstream step instead. A checking step is a symptom. Automating the check makes the symptom cheaper and leaves the cause.
  5. 05DecidingA person weighs the case up and makes a call.Keep a person on the call. Split the routine cases from the awkward ones, then automate the routine path on its own.

How the audit works

How is the time worked out?
It is your own arithmetic, done for you. Minutes per time, multiplied by times a week, per step, added up. Nothing is scaled, adjusted or padded on the way through.
Why does waiting not count as machine work?
Because nobody is working during a wait, so automating the work saves nothing. What software removes from a wait is the silence: the reminder nobody sent, the queue nobody could see. That is worth building, and it is a different build.
Is there an industry average to compare this against?
No, and none is quoted. There is no sourced figure for what a typical UK company loses on a typical workflow, and inventing one would only make your number look worse. Every figure on this page comes from what you typed.
What if nobody has timed the steps?
Put in a high guess, look at the recommendation, then put in a low one. If the same step still comes out on top, your estimate is good enough to act on. If it flips, that step is the one worth timing next week.
Why only five kinds of step?
Because the split that matters is a small one: can software do this step unaided, or not. Two of the five qualify. A longer taxonomy would look more thorough and would not change what you do on Monday.
Does this tell us what fixing it would cost?
No. It tells you which step to fix. The ROI calculator prices it, asking for a build cost rather than guessing one, and our own quote is a fixed price in writing before anything starts.

Carry on next door

Which job to automate first

This audit goes deep on one workflow. That one ranks several against each other, so you pick the right workflow to audit.

Open it

Automation ROI calculator

Once the audit names a step, this puts a number on what it costs you a year and how long a fix takes to pay for itself.

Open it

One step, not a transformation programme

If the audit names a step and you want a second opinion on whether it is worth building, that is a twenty-minute conversation, not a proposal.

Book twenty minutes

A chat panel asking to keep the CRM true today, the reply that 26 records were updated and 4 duplicates merged, contact panels joined by teal threads, and a run log.
An audit's outcome as a run: records updated, duplicates merged, CRM true. The figures are an illustration of a run, not a client's results.

Ran your numbers? Send us the figures and we will come back with a fixed price, or book twenty minutes and talk them through.

Book twenty minutes →Send us the brief

Elsewhere on this site

Each service is its own page. Pricing, the FAQ, the Manchester company page, the free tools and the blog sit alongside them.

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From the blog

Umar has brought real value to LP Exchange by helping us utilise AI effectively across the business. He has strong technical knowledge, but importantly, he understands how to apply it in a practical and commercially useful way. His work has supported improvements across data cleansing, process automation, marketing and sales reporting, helping us turn complex information into clearer insights and more efficient ways of working.

James DonohueManaging Director, LP Exchange · 21 September 2026