What you fill in and tick stays in this browser window only. We do not store or send anything. It is gone when you close the page, so print your result.
For owners and operations people who feel something takes too much time but cannot say how much. Automating a process nobody has written down is an expensive way to find out how it really works.
Filling it in takes an hour. It usually shows that the problem sits in two or three steps, not in the whole process.
1. Pick one process
A good candidate meets at least three of these:
Typical examples: orders arriving by email, quotes, invoicing, matching payments, booking transport, answering the same customer questions.
2. Fill in the sheet
One row is one step done by a person or a system. Write how it works today, not how it should work.
| Column | What to write |
|---|---|
| Step | What happens, as a verb: "reads the email", "retypes the items" |
| Who | A role, not a name: sales clerk, warehouse, accountant |
| Tool / system | Where it happens: Outlook, Excel, ERP, WhatsApp, paper |
| Input | What the step starts with: email, PDF, phone call |
| Output | What the step produces: a record in the system, a confirmation, a task |
| Time per occurrence (min) | How many minutes one run takes. Estimate first, then time it once with a stopwatch |
| Times per week | How often the step repeats |
| Minutes per week | The sheet calculates it |
| Errors / rework | What goes wrong and how often it has to be redone |
| Automation idea | Leave it empty if you have none. That is our job |
| Step | Who | Tool / system | Input | Output | Time per occurrence (min) | Times per week | Minutes per week | Errors / rework | Automation idea | Remove step |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | ||||||||||
| 0 | ||||||||||
| 0 | ||||||||||
| 0 | ||||||||||
| 0 |
Total: 0 minutes a week, that is 0 hours
Tip: fill it in with the person who does the process every day. Not with the manager who knows it from meetings. The two versions differ more than you would expect.
3. Example: an order arriving by email
Invented example, not a real client. The numbers are illustrative, not measured. You will find it on the "Example" sheet.
| Step | Who | Tool / system | Input | Output | Time (min) | Per week | Errors / rework | Automation idea |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reads the order and finds the customer | sales clerk | Outlook, Excel customer list | email with PDF | known customer | 3 | 40 | company name differs from the Excel | AI reads the email and matches the customer |
| Checks prices and stock | sales clerk | Excel price list, warehouse | items from the PDF | confirmed items | 5 | 40 | old price list in another file | check against one price list and the stock |
| Retypes the order into the system | sales clerk | ERP | confirmed items | order in the system | 6 | 40 | typo in quantity or code | the system pre-fills the order, a person confirms |
| Sends a confirmation to the customer | sales clerk | Outlook | order | confirmation email | 2 | 40 | confirmation forgotten | confirmation goes out automatically after approval |
| Passes the order to the warehouse | sales clerk, warehouse | order | picked order | 2 | 40 | message gets lost in the chat | a task for the warehouse straight from the system |
In the example these steps would take 720 minutes a week, or 12 hours. Most of the time goes into retyping and checking prices, not the confirmation itself. That is exactly what the map is for.
4. What to send us
- The filled-in sheet without personal data (one process is enough).
- Two or three sample inputs, for example a real order email. Black out names and personal data.
- A list of the systems the process uses, and whether you have admin access to them.