How to measure the time your team spends on admin

Why a rough guess is not enough

Ask a business owner how much time the team spends on admin and you will hear “a lot”. Ask which tasks exactly and the answer gets vague. Without a number per task, you cannot know what to automate first, or check afterwards that it worked.

The method in four steps

This is the method we use during the assessment. You can do it yourself in a week:

• List the repetitive tasks: follow-ups, document requests, order entry, answers to the same questions.
• Count the volumes over a normal week: how many follow-ups, requests, documents.
• Time each task three or four times and keep the average (for example: requesting a document, 6 minutes).
• Multiply: volume × average time = hours per week, task by task.

Reading the result

Usually, two or three tasks make up most of the time. Those are the ones to tackle first. A frequent, simple task that always follows the same rules is a good candidate for automation. A rare, sensitive task that needs judgment should stay human.

Keeping the measure over time

Once the tool is live, the same calculation becomes the proof: number of actions taken by the software × reference time. That is the number in the weekly Singular report, and it is what our guarantee is based on.