Seven Process Problems Common in Mid-Sized Companies, and How to Spot Them
Process problems can cost a mid-sized company thousands of dollars without ever appearing as a line item in the budget. They happen in the handoffs between teams, where there is no clear ownership on tasks, and the cost is spread across many people, a few minutes at a time.
One manufacturer in British Columbia was losing 20 hours a week to order processing. Orders arrived by email. Someone had to read each one, enter it into the ERP, then check the price against a paper-based document stored somewhere else. Each system worked as intended, but the process connecting them depended on hours of manual work every week. That cost was easy to miss because it didn't belong to any one team, system, or budget line.
We see versions of this problem across construction, healthcare, natural resources, and other organizations with complex operations. The details vary, but the symptoms of operational inefficiency are often similar. This article outlines seven common process problems to look for, along with a practical way to estimate what each one is costing your business.
How to put a dollar figure on a process problem
The easiest cost to calculate is time. If several people spend part of every week reading emails, entering information, checking spreadsheets, chasing approvals, or correcting mistakes, those hours add up quickly. To get a baseline of what the process costs each year, multiply the hours each person spends per week by the number of people involved, their loaded hourly cost (salary plus benefits and other employment costs), and the number of weeks the work happens each year.
That baseline only captures the direct labour cost. There is also the opportunity cost of what those employees could be doing instead. Time spent keeping a manual process moving is time that could be spent serving customers, completing projects, generating revenue, or improving operations.
Disconnected data can create another cost that is harder to spot. One of our construction clients had purchasing information spread across different managers’ inboxes. By bringing that data together, the company could see what it was spending on timber, steel, and other materials across the business in real time. Without that visibility, it was harder to spot purchasing trends and opportunities to control costs, much less forecast.
Also consider the costs created when the process goes wrong: rework, credits, late fees, missed or delayed orders, and other errors. Add these to the labour and opportunity costs to get a more complete picture of what the process is really costing you.
Seven business process problems to look for
1. Manual data entry
Manual data entry becomes a problem when the same information has to be entered into multiple systems or files. Every additional entry takes time and creates another opportunity for errors.
A customer address might be entered into the CRM when a deal closes, typed again into the ERP when the order is created, and copied once more into a shipping system. None of those steps is difficult, but the repetition adds up across hundreds of orders.
Follow one transaction from start to finish and count how many times the same information is entered. Repeated entries is usually a sign that systems could be better connected.
2. Spreadsheets that became a system
A spreadsheet becomes a process problem when it stops being a useful tool and becomes the system the business depends on. This often happens when official software does not handle a particular need well, so someone builds a workaround in Excel.
One construction project management firm we worked with planned its staff schedules out of a spreadsheet. Every time a plan shifted, someone took a screenshot and sent it to the crews via whatsapp. Then the plan shifted again. Another screenshot. Another round of manual messages. It worked, until they realized they were spending 6 hours sending individual messages to every single employee in their roster.
Files like this have a way of quietly becoming essential. Nobody decides it; it just happens. And with that comes a familiar risk: one person becomes the only one who truly understands how the spreadsheet works. Everyone else is locked out, or worse, has access but no idea which version is current or which cells shouldn’t be touched.
If you notice this happens in your company, ask which spreadsheets a team couldn’t work without for a week. Those are the ones worth examining first, and sometimes the ones worth replacing with software designed for that use case.
3. Approvals that hold up the work
Approvals become a process problem when work depends on someone noticing a request, reviewing it, and responding before the next step can happen. The delay can be especially costly when the person approving requests has other priorities piled up.
A field supervisor might submit a change order by email and wait several days for the head office to review it. The crew still has to make a decision on site, so the work continues and the paperwork catches up later.
Look at how long each step in your approval workflow takes, how often work is delayed while waiting for a sign-off, and how often people decide to go ahead without one.
4. Multiple systems to answer one question
When basic business questions require information from several different sources, employees regularly have to piece things together to form an answer.
If a sales manager needs to check the CRM, ERP, a shared drive, and email before answering a simple account question, this is a process problem.
Consider three questions your team answers regularly. How long does it take to get each answer, how many systems does someone have to check and what transformations do they need to make to that information to shape the answers they need? That time is part of the cost of keeping information disconnected.
5. Senior people doing routine work
Experienced employees often end up doing work that does not require their experience. A senior estimator might spend hours formatting quotes, a project manager might reconcile timesheets, or a controller might pull and combine month-end reports by hand. The work matters, and it has to get done. But it doesn’t need someone with fifteen years in the business to do it.
Look closely at how your senior people spend their time. Separate the work that draws on their judgment from the work that follows the same steps, the same rules, every time. Repetitive work is where there may be an opportunity to free up capacity.
6. Manual reporting
Manual reporting becomes a problem when a recurring report requires people to export data, clean it up, combine spreadsheets, check totals, and format the results every time it is produced.
One industrial services company we worked with had field teams recording inspections, records, and timesheets on paper at remote sites, so reports depended on that paperwork making its way back to the office and getting digitally entered and compiled.
The time spent preparing the report is only part of the cost. The delay can also make the information less useful. Look at how long recurring reports take to produce and how quickly the underlying data changes. The reports that take the longest and go out of date the fastest are the best places to reduce manual reporting first.
7. Knowledge that lives with one person
Some processes work because one person knows how they work. It might be the person who understands unusual pricing arrangements, knows which customers need special paperwork, or can fix a process when something goes wrong.
For example, a finance manager may be the only person who knows which adjustments need to be made before a particular customer's monthly invoice can be issued. When they are away, someone else has to piece the process together from old emails and notes.
Over time, the process itself can grow around one person's experience. Ask what would become difficult if a key employee were away for a month. Those answers can reveal processes that need to be documented, simplified, or redesigned.
A self-audit for department leads
You don't need to map every process in the business to find the biggest problems. Start with each department lead and use these questions to identify where time, money, or information is getting lost.
Start with the problem that costs the most
Once each department has completed the audit, you should have a short list of problems worth investigating. From there:
- Compare the results across departments and flag problems that cross from one team to another.
- Put a dollar figure on the top three using the method above.
- Map the costliest problem one step at a time. Look at where the time and effort go, which systems are involved, and what is causing the bottleneck.
Sometimes the answer will be relatively simple, such as connecting two systems or moving an approval into a tool people already use. Other problems cut across teams, systems, and workarounds, and the right fix is less obvious.
How to fix business process problems when the answer isn’t obvious
When the fix isn’t obvious, that is where Discovery starts at TTT. A UX researcher looks at how the work gets done day to day, a technical lead examines the systems and data behind it, a product owner focuses on what should be built, and a business analyst makes sure the work delivers the business outcomes that matter. Together, they determine whether the right answer is a change in your process, an integration, automated workflow, or new software, and define a practical first step.
If AI looks like part of the answer for you, the AI Readiness Assessment can help you determine whether your organization is ready. Where to Start With AI: The Four Levels Every Organization Moves Through provides a framework for deciding what to tackle first.
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