Step 4 of 8
FLOW · measure first
Weigh — decide whether the fix is worth it
W is the last step in which nothing changes, and the only one whose answer may be “do nothing”. That is exactly why it sits before REFY rather than after it.
The arithmetic runs against the figures from L and the finding from O — not against a wish. The question is not what is maximally possible but what remains realistic once your own people’s time, the testing effort and the first weeks of double work are counted in.
- Answers the question
- Is the intervention worth it — and from when?
- What the step produces
- A reasoned decision: which lever, what it costs, what it saves, when it pays for itself. Or the finding that none of them does.
How the step is carried out
Translate the bottleneck into euros
The step named in O, priced with the rates and volumes from L: what does it cost per year if everything stays as it is? That is the benchmark every intervention has to beat.
Size the plausible lever, not the maximum one
Not “automated, the step disappears”, but: by what share could the time realistically fall, and what remains as checking, exceptions and rework? A lever promising ninety per cent has not counted the remainder.
Cost it completely
Licence, setup, testing, training, operation — and your own people’s time. The last item is almost always forgotten and is frequently the largest. It belongs in the calculation at the same loaded rate used for process time in L.
Compute payback, not return
When is the money back? As a range, from the upper and lower cost estimates. Beyond roughly eighteen months this stops being a decision in a mid-sized company and becomes a bet on conditions staying unchanged.
Price the do-nothing option seriously
What happens if nothing is done — does the volume grow, does the damage grow, or does it simply stay? Sometimes the honest answer is: nothing much. Then the outcome of this step is to do nothing, and the cycle restarts with the second most expensive candidate.
Finished when
- Cost and saving for the one lever exist as ranges.
- Your own working time appears as a line item in the cost.
- Payback is stated as a period, not as a number.
- The do-nothing option has been calculated, not merely mentioned.
- The decision could be explained to a managing director in three sentences.
The typical mistake
Leaving your own time out
Nearly every business case lists licence and setup costs. What is missing is your own people’s time: alignment, testing, rework, the first weeks in which the old and the new route run side by side. Priced at the same loaded rate used in L, projects that looked worthwhile on paper start to tip over. That is what this step is for — and tipping over here is far cheaper than tipping over after the purchase.
What you can compute yourself
The automation check tests whether a process is suitable for a technical intervention at all: volume, regularity, exceptions, data quality. The maturity calculator supplies the other half of the answer — a workflow without a settled sequence carries no lever, however expensive it is.
The step, worked through
Each sample analysis carries a saving range for its intervention and a verdict on whether it pays. Where it does not, that is stated plainly — a green number next to a recommendation to do nothing would be a lie.
The analyses are constructed models, not client projects. Their figures show what a measurement would look like — they are not results achieved for anyone.
- Sample analysisAN-2026-08
The sales lead who shows up as two boxes
A packaging printer measures the path from incoming order to order confirmation. The bottleneck is the credit check. The second finding is a role two steps share, and it only becomes an action once the first one is dealt with.
- Sample analysisAN-2026-07
The loudest process in the building is not the most expensive
An engineering consultancy wants to digitalise leave requests. The measurement agrees with the complaint and still not with the investment. The process is slow, but cheap.
- Sample analysisAN-2026-06
The €500 approval limit nobody has touched since
A plastics processor has every purchase above €500 signed by the managing director. The limit is old, the prices are not. Four out of five orders pass through a gate that opens twice a week.
Questions
More often than proposals suggest. Two cases are typical: the bottleneck sits outside your own control — with a customer, an authority, a supplier — or the volume is simply too small. A process with forty cases a year carries neither a licence nor a setup effort, however irritating it may be.
Because a return figure is a percentage without a time axis: choose a long enough horizon and every investment looks good. The question actually being decided is when the money comes back. A payback period answers that, and it can be checked in Y.
Build the one with the shorter payback and note the other as a candidate for the next cycle. Two levers built at once cannot be separated in Y; afterwards nobody knows which one worked, and the cycle after that starts from a guess instead of a finding.
If you want to know what your process costs: measure it.
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Remote · fixed price · result in euros