The Manual Work Audit
Three weeks. One function. Fixed fee. You leave with a priced number you can take upward, a thing that works, and a one-page summary written for your boss.
We map the manual work at task level: work sampling, system logs, and structured interviews with the people doing the work, not their managers. Process maps describe what is supposed to happen; Manual Load lives in what actually happens between the steps.
Every task line gets fully loaded hours and cost, rolled up to a Manual Load figure by team and process. Then each opportunity is placed on two axes: can it be eliminated, and can the value be converted. Anything with no conversion path and no owner scores zero, however automatable it is.
We build a working prototype of the number-one elimination on your real data, draft a Value Contract for each of the top five, and write the one-page summary for whoever approves your budget.
- The Ledger. A priced, task-level inventory of manual work for the function, with Manual Load by team and process.
- Top five eliminations, scored on realizability, each with its conversion path: growth absorbed, backfill avoided, redeployment with an output, or cycle time that changes cash.
- A working prototype of the first elimination, on your data, by the end of week three.
- Five draft Value Contracts. Opportunity, conversion path, owner, date, cost line, finance sign-off.
- The stop list. Work the audit found nobody needed, which can be stopped without building anything.
- A one-page summary written for your boss, in their language.
Leaders who run the work, not the technology.
Heads of Shared Services, Heads of Finance Operations, Senior Directors and VPs of Operations at India sites of a few hundred to a few thousand people. Order-to-cash, procure-to-pay, record-to-report, HR operations, customer-operations back office.
If you are being asked to absorb next year’s volume without next year’s headcount, or to show your parent company value beyond cost, this is built for that conversation.
Fixed fee, sized to the value.
The audit is a fixed fee, agreed before we start, and sized to be a small fraction of the year-one value it identifies. It sits inside a Director’s discretionary authority. It is not free, because a free assessment is a sales call, and we want you to be able to tell the difference.
Elimination Sprints that follow are six to eight weeks per opportunity, priced per opportunity and closed with a signed Value Contract. A quarterly Manual Load review with your own team keeps the Ledger alive after we leave.
Is this an AI project?
It is a manual-work project. AI is one of the tools, used where the work is unstructured or judgment-shaped. Where the work can be stopped or simplified, we do that first, because it is cheaper. Where it needs a rule or an integration, we use a rule or an integration. You will not be sold a platform.
Will this be seen as a headcount-reduction exercise?
The audit prices work, not people. The conversion paths we use most are growth absorbed without hiring and backfills avoided through natural attrition. How the capacity is used is your decision and appears in the Value Contract as such.
What do you need from us?
Access to the people doing the work for interviews and work sampling; read access to the relevant system logs or reports; a sponsor who can convene a one-hour readout in week three. Most teams spend less than fifteen person-hours on the audit in total.
What if the audit finds very little?
Then you have a defensible number that says so, and we tell you not to buy the sprint. The 45-minute estimate exists to catch this before you pay for anything.
Do you work with teams outside India?
The audit is designed for India sites of global companies and for Indian enterprises; the realized numbers travel to a global parent as readily as to a local CFO. Remote-led audits elsewhere are possible; ask.