26Point Checklist

The framework · Business Operations

14 Operations & Process Efficiency

12 sub-categories. The three numbers on each are the typical opportunity in that area across businesses — not your result.

Time8.8/10Financial8.0/10Automation8.2/10

These three numbers are researched cross-business benchmarks for the area — the typical opportunity available in it. They are not your score, not a forecast, and not a promise. What is actually critical depends on your business, which is what the audit is for.

14.1

Core workflows

Time9/10Financial8/10Automation9/10
What this is
The main repeatable sequences of work that produce and deliver what you sell.
Why it matters
Core workflows are where most of the labour cost sits. A business that has never mapped them is optimising by instinct, and usually optimising the wrong step.
You have a problem here if
Nobody can draw the end-to-end path a job takes without arguing about it.
What to automate
Map first, automate second — automating an undocumented process encodes its faults. Once mapped, workflow tooling can enforce sequence, assign work and remove the hand-off delays that dominate most cycle times.
14.2

Process ownership

Time7/10Financial7/10Automation6/10
What this is
A named person accountable for each process working, not just for doing their part of it.
Why it matters
Processes without owners degrade. Problems at the joins between roles are nobody's job to fix, and those joins are where most failures occur.
You have a problem here if
A recurring problem has been known for months and nobody is responsible for it.
What to automate
Not automatable — this is an accountability decision. Software helps by making process performance visible per owner so the accountability has something behind it.
14.3

Bottlenecks

Time10/10Financial10/10Automation8/10
What this is
The step that limits total output, regardless of how fast everything else runs.
Why it matters
Ten for time and ten for financial impact — jointly the highest-rated line in the framework. Improving anything other than the bottleneck produces no additional throughput at all.
You have a problem here if
Work piles up consistently at the same point.
What to automate
Instrument queue lengths and waiting times at every stage so the constraint is identified by data rather than by argument — it is frequently not where people assume. Then relieve it deliberately, by automation, capacity or resequencing.
14.4

Waiting/delays

Time10/10Financial8/10Automation9/10
What this is
Time when nothing is happening — waiting for approval, information, a person, or a hand-off.
Why it matters
Ten out of ten for time. In most small businesses, elapsed time is overwhelmingly waiting rather than working, and waiting costs nothing to remove except attention.
You have a problem here if
A two-hour job takes two weeks to complete.
What to automate
Very high automation potential. Automatic hand-offs, parallel rather than sequential steps, approval rules that only escalate exceptions, and alerts on anything idle beyond a threshold.
14.5

Duplication

Time10/10Financial7/10Automation10/10
What this is
The same information being entered, checked or handled more than once.
Why it matters
Ten for time and ten for automation. Duplication is pure waste, invisible in the accounts, and it is almost always caused by systems that do not talk to each other.
You have a problem here if
The same customer details are typed into more than one system.
What to automate
The clearest automation case in the framework. Integrate systems so data is entered once; where integration is impractical, automate the transfer. Count the re-entry points before starting — there are usually more than expected.
14.6

Errors and rework

Time10/10Financial9/10Automation9/10
What this is
Work that has to be corrected, and the cause behind it.
Why it matters
Ten for time. Rework is paid twice and damages the customer relationship as well as the margin, yet it rarely appears as a line anywhere.
You have a problem here if
Errors are fixed quietly by whoever notices, and never counted.
What to automate
Automated validation and checks at the point of entry catch most of it before it propagates. Log every error with a cause code and report weekly — a small number of causes will explain the majority.
14.7

Standardisation

Time9/10Financial7/10Automation8/10
What this is
Doing the same work the same way regardless of who does it.
Why it matters
Standardisation is the precondition for delegation, automation and quality. Without it, capacity is capped by the individuals who know how.
You have a problem here if
Output quality varies noticeably by person.
What to automate
Encode the standard into the tools — templates, required fields, guided workflows — so the standard way is also the easy way. Documentation alone rarely changes behaviour; the system doing it for you does.
14.8

SOPs/documentation

Time8/10Financial6/10Automation9/10
What this is
Written procedures for the work that matters, kept current enough to be followed.
Why it matters
Nine out of ten for automation. Documentation is what turns owner knowledge into business knowledge, and it is the difference between a business that can be left and one that cannot.
You have a problem here if
Training someone new means them following an experienced person around.
What to automate
Now much cheaper than it was: record the work being done and have a language model draft the procedure, then have the doer correct it. Keep procedures beside the work, not in a folder nobody opens.
14.9

Capacity

Time8/10Financial8/10Automation8/10
What this is
How much the business can actually deliver, and how close it is to that limit.
Why it matters
Capacity blindness causes both over-promising and premature hiring. Knowing the real number is what makes growth decisions safe.
You have a problem here if
Whether you can take on more work is a feeling rather than a calculation.
What to automate
Automate the measurement: committed work against available hours or units, forward-looking. Combine with pipeline data and the capacity conversation becomes a plan instead of a panic.
14.10

Productivity

Time9/10Financial10/10Automation8/10
What this is
Output per person or per hour, and whether the trend is going the right way.
Why it matters
Nine for time and ten for financial. Productivity is where operational improvement becomes profit rather than just relief.
You have a problem here if
Headcount has grown faster than revenue.
What to automate
Track revenue and delivered units per employee automatically over time. Use it as a trend for the business, not as a stick for individuals — measuring people rather than processes produces gaming, not productivity.
14.11

Quality control

Time8/10Financial8/10Automation9/10
What this is
Checking work against the standard before it reaches the customer.
Why it matters
Catching a problem internally is dramatically cheaper than catching it after delivery, in both money and reputation.
You have a problem here if
Customers are your primary defect detector.
What to automate
Automated checks and validation wherever the criteria are objective, with human review reserved for judgement. Track escape rate — defects found by customers versus found internally — as the measure of whether it is working.
14.12

Continuous improvement

Time7/10Financial8/10Automation6/10
What this is
A standing mechanism for getting better rather than an occasional project.
Why it matters
Compounding small improvements beat periodic overhauls, and they do not require the business to stop.
You have a problem here if
Improvement only happens after something breaks badly.
What to automate
Automate the inputs: a suggestion and defect queue fed from the data above, reviewed on a fixed cadence with each item accepted or closed. The improvements are human work; the discipline should be systemic.

Category totals

Time 105/120 · Financial 96/120 · Automation 99/120. The sum is the official roll-up; the averages above exist so categories of different sizes can be compared.