A clear plan.
A business case you can check.
This example uses an invented business and assumed figures to show what a review can deliver. It combines an immediate process improvement with a focused pilot and a transparent return calculation.
The situation.
A small team receives enquiries in a shared inbox. Details are copied into a tracker and someone prepares a quote. Follow-up depends on whoever remembers. The owner wants customers answered promptly and the team spending less time on admin.
The recommendation: fix the handover, then connect it.
Give every enquiry an owner, a status and a next-action date in the existing tracker. This makes work visible and gives the team a clear routine.
Connect one inbox to one compatible tracker. Create draft records from incoming enquiries and prepare follow-up reminders. Route missing details to a person; keep quote approval and customer replies with the team.
The pilot is justified when the remaining repeated-entry work is frequent enough to make the numbers attractive. In this example, the review identifies enough weekly effort to test that opportunity.
The numbers behind the decision.
Here is a capacity-value model using five net hours released each week. It assumes 5.5 hours of repetitive work are removed and 0.5 hours are added for checking and upkeep. Every figure is an input to test during the pilot.
- Time released · 230 hours a year
- 5 net hours per week × 46 working weeks. The remaining six weeks allow for holidays and quieter periods.
- Annual capacity value · £5,750
- 230 hours × an assumed £25 value per hour. Choose a value that reflects the work your team can actually redeploy that time to.
- Solveward fees · £2,095
- £595 Workflow Review + £1,500 entry-scope pilot, including training and handover.
- Your team’s one-off time · £200 assumed value
- Allow 8 hours across the review, setup, testing and training at £25 an hour. Adding that to the Solveward fees makes the model’s total upfront investment £2,295. Replace this allowance with your own team estimate and add any other setup costs.
- Recurring cost assumption · £360 a year
- £30 a month for software. Routine internal upkeep is included in the net-hours estimate. This model assumes the team handles ongoing support; add any separately purchased support to the calculation.
- First-year capacity value after modelled costs · £3,095
- £5,750 − £2,295 − £360, for a full 12 months after rollout. This is modelled value from time released, rather than booked revenue or cash in the bank.
- Capacity-value payback · around 5.1 months
- £2,295 ÷ ((£5,750 − £360) ÷ 12) = 5.11 months after rollout, using an even monthly average. The calculation assumes the released time is put to its valued use.
What changes the return? At two net hours per week with the same £25 hourly value, software and project costs, annual capacity value is £2,300 and modelled payback is around 14.2 months. This is why we measure the work before agreeing a build.
Turning time into a financial benefit: identify how it will be used. Avoided paid overtime can reduce costs; additional billable work contributes its margin; redeployed staff time creates capacity. Use that benefit, and any extra delivery costs, in the final business case.
Test the improvement in the working week.
- Set the starting point. Record task volume, handling time, errors and late follow-ups over a representative period.
- Agree the target. Choose a net-hours target and customer-response measures based on those observations.
- Run a bounded trial. Test one workflow, including duplicates, missing details and failed connections. Record the effort spent checking the output.
- Compare the results. Measure a comparable period, explain changes in workload and update the return calculation with the observed figures.
- Hand it over. Walk the team through the process, agree ownership and provide instructions and a fallback route.
What you take away from the review.
A process map, a baseline, a recommendation and a written business case with next-step costs. You can use it to guide an internal improvement or commission a pilot with Solveward.
Your £595 review covers one agreed workflow. Allow around 2–3 hours of team input. Target delivery is 10 working days from the agreed start, with the date and required inputs confirmed before booking.
See the pricing and delivery stages or explore enquiry and quote follow-up automation.
Talk through your own workflow