UK telecom software company
How we found and removed 94 hours of manual work every month
A growing telecom software business had significant operational work still happening manually across teams and systems. We started with a company-wide operations audit, mapped the highest-friction processes and built a prioritised transformation roadmap. We then moved into implementation, starting with the systems that could create value fastest.
Key outcomes
Measured impact
- ≈94 hours/month
- of manual work removed across three implemented systems
- ≈£12.4k/year
- of operational capacity recovered
- ≈87%
- combined first-year ROI
What changed day to day
- Project deliveryProject managers spend less time on admin and more on planning and delivery.
- MarketingLeadership gets a live performance view without a weekly reporting rebuild.
- FinanceBilling moves forward with fewer manual handoffs and built-in validation.
What we delivered
- A clear transformation roadmap
The audit gave leadership a prioritised commercial case for what to change first, what value each opportunity could create and which foundations were needed next.
- A faster path from requirements to delivery
We redesigned how approved requirements move from planning into delivery, removing repetitive setup work and giving technical teams consistent, ready-to-use information.
- A single marketing performance view
Marketing reporting now runs from a shared analytical dataset into live dashboards, replacing weekly collection and presentation rebuilds.
- A more reliable billing process
We redesigned how billing information is prepared, checked and approved, reducing manual handoffs and helping Finance resolve unusual figures before invoices are issued.
We started by understanding how the business actually worked
Before building anything, we worked across the company’s core departments to understand how work moved through the business.
We spoke with department heads and the people doing the work day to day, mapped key processes and reviewed the systems behind them.
For each major workflow, we identified where time was being lost, where repetitive work was creating bottlenecks and where disconnected systems were slowing teams down. We then quantified the operational impact and assessed where better processes, data, automation or AI could create meaningful value.
What the audit uncovered
- 20
operational bottlenecks documented across five core functions
- 17
transformation opportunities connected to a specific business problem
- 45+
hours of high-friction work identified each month before implementation
Audit outcomes
- A commercial case showing which changes could return value fastest
- A three-phase roadmap moving from quick wins to foundational and advanced systems
- Clear ownership of what should change first and why
From evidence to an implementation plan
The audit gave leadership a commercial basis for deciding what to change first. We assessed each opportunity by time, operational capacity, implementation cost, payback and the foundations it could create for later work.
This separated work that could return value quickly from ideas that first needed better data, documentation or integrations. The first three projects were selected because they removed visible work immediately and strengthened the wider roadmap.
How the work moved
- 01Audit
20 bottlenecks documented across five core functions
- 02Opportunity inventory
17 opportunities ranked by expected return and the bottlenecks they would remove
- 03Prioritisation
Highest-return work moved first; dependent systems followed in the right order
- 04Implementation
Three priority workflows redesigned and delivered first
Give project managers their time back
Problem
Project managers were manually turning approved business requirements held in Excel into work items in the company’s task management platform.
They copied descriptions, added supporting material, set priorities and rebuilt the relationships between tasks by hand. Across five concurrent projects, this consumed approximately 54 hours every month and held up the start of development.
What changed
We redesigned how business requirements are created, structured and handed to technical teams. We then built a workflow that turns approved requirements into ready-to-use work items, including the context, supporting material and dependencies developers need.
Business impact
The new process has removed repetitive setup work from project managers, eliminated typing and transcription errors and created one consistent standard for turning business requirements into technical work. Project managers can now spend that time on planning, stakeholder decisions and delivery.
Replace weekly reporting rebuilds with a live performance view
Problem
The marketing team spent a significant part of every week collecting performance data for revenue-generating activity across Google Analytics, LinkedIn and email marketing platforms.
They then consolidated the data in spreadsheets and rebuilt the same presentation slides. The process took 10–12 hours each week and still left leadership looking backwards rather than working from a current view of performance.
What changed
We redesigned the reporting flow around one shared dataset, centralised the marketing data in an analytical database and created live dashboards that connected performance to the decisions leadership needed to make.
Business impact
Leadership now has one consistent view of marketing performance. The marketing team has recovered time for analysis, campaign decisions and creative work instead of rebuilding reports.
Connect operations data to client billing
Problem
Creating client invoices depended on repeated coordination between Operations and Finance. The Operations team manually collected usage and subscriber data from internal databases, then passed it to Finance.
When Finance found unusual figures, the teams resolved them through separate messages and spreadsheet checks before an invoice could be approved. The lack of one shared workflow created repeated handoffs and slowed billing.
What changed
We standardised how Operations and Finance collaborate on client invoices. A connected workflow prepares invoice data from operational systems, creates a review task and gives Finance one place to approve, reject or query unusual values. Exceptions and the decisions around them now stay attached to the invoice work rather than being scattered across separate conversations.
Business impact
The new process has removed repetitive transfer work, created a cleaner handoff between Operations and Finance and put unusual figures in front of Finance before billing. The company can scale invoice volume without adding the same amount of administrative work.