Insight
The most expensive software in your business is the retyping
Nobody budgets for it, it appears on no invoice, and it is usually the largest single cost in an office of ten people. Here is how to find it.
2 min read
Most construction and real estate firms already own more software than they use. The estimating package, the accounting system, the project tool, the CRM somebody bought in 2019. None of them talk to each other, so a person does it: reading a number off one screen and typing it into another.
That work is invisible. It has no line item, no vendor, and no renewal date. It is also, in a great many offices, the single largest operational cost after payroll — because it is payroll.
How to find it in an afternoon
Pick one process that everybody complains about. A change order, a draw request, a new lead. Then follow one real instance of it end to end and write down every place the same fact gets entered.
Do not ask how the process is supposed to work. Ask the person who does it to show you the last one they did. The documented process and the real process diverge, and the gap between them is where the cost lives.
What you are looking for
- The same number typed into more than two systems
- A spreadsheet that exists only to move data between two tools
- A step where somebody waits for somebody else to notice an email
- A document that is authoritative on one person’s laptop
The last one is the most dangerous. It is not a time cost, it is a risk: the version everyone is working from and the version that is correct are different, and nobody knows for how long.
Why the obvious fix usually fails
The instinctive response is to replace all of it with one system that does everything. That project is large, disruptive, and asks a business that is busy to change how it works while it is busy. It is why so many of them stall halfway.
The cheaper answer is usually to leave the systems alone and automate the handoffs between them. The estimator keeps their estimating package. The bookkeeper keeps the accounting system. The retyping between the two stops.
How to know it worked
Not by asking whether people like the new tool. Measure the thing you were actually buying: how long the process takes end to end, and how often a number arrives at the far end different from how it started.
If neither of those moved, the automation was decoration. That is a fair test to hold any vendor to, including us.
Let’s look at where your time is going.
A short conversation, no obligation. We will tell you plainly whether there is a worthwhile project here.
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