Built for your sector

Where the hours actually go

In almost every business the lost time sits next to the real work, not in it. A machine shop does not lose hours to machining and an accountant does not lose them to bookkeeping. It goes into what happens around it. Per sector that is a different spot, and it is worth knowing which one before you buy software.

Technical SME and industry

The hours rarely go into producing. They go into recalculating quotes, retyping order confirmations and working out afterwards which job actually made money. We start at the quote, because that is where the margin is decided and where the most time disappears.

Wholesale and distribution

You sell to the same customers over and over, but nobody notices when one of them quietly starts ordering less. That signal sits in your ERP and never comes out of it. Getting it out, and putting a follow-up on it, is usually worth more than any new campaign.

Service businesses

Contracts that renew themselves are wonderful until one lapses without anyone noticing. Renewals and invoicing are almost always the first automation here that pays for itself, because the money was already agreed and only the administration stood in the way.

Real estate

The problem is seldom too few leads. It is that a lead from Tuesday still has not been called on Friday. Response speed decides who gets the mandate, and speed is exactly the thing a CRM can enforce rather than hope for.

Accounting firms

The peak around a deadline is not the real problem. Not knowing which client file eats three times the hours it bills is. That becomes visible only afterwards, or never, and it quietly decides your margin for the whole year.

Healthcare and private practices

The admin around a treatment often takes longer than the treatment. Scheduling, reimbursement and follow-up each live in a different system, and the person bridging them is usually the one you least want doing data entry.

What these six have in common

The sectors differ, the pattern underneath rarely does. Three things come back every time.

1. 1. The same data lives in three places. A customer exists in the accounting package, in a spreadsheet and in someone’s mailbox. Nobody knows which one is right, so everything gets checked twice.
2. 2. Follow-up depends on a person remembering. That works until the person is ill, busy or gone. It is also the failure nobody sees, because a quote that was never chased leaves no trace.
3. 3. The figures arrive too late to act on. Knowing in March that a project lost money in January is history, not management. The same numbers a week later are a decision.

Your sector is not listed?

These six are the ones we have the most kilometres in, not the only ones we take on. The method does not change: we measure where the time goes before we propose anything, and if the measurement says a tool will not pay for itself, we say so. What we do not do is sector software we have never worked with, such as a medical record system or a point of sale. We would be learning on your budget.