The hidden cost of the workaround
The spreadsheet nobody owns, the copy-paste step, the "just email it to me". Workarounds feel free. They rarely are.
Every business runs on a few quiet workarounds. The spreadsheet that lives on one person's desktop. The step where someone copies a number from one screen into another. The "just email it to me and I'll sort it." They feel free, because nobody ever sends you an invoice for them. They are rarely free.
What a workaround actually is
A workaround is the human glue between two things that should join up on their own, or a manual step that exists because the software cannot do it yet. It starts life as a sensible fix in a busy week. The trouble is that it tends to stay long after the busy week has passed.
Why they multiply
Workarounds breed because nobody ever decides to keep them. One person solves a problem their way, a second copies it, and within a year it is simply "how we do it here." No one owns it, no one reviews it, and no one has the full picture of how much time it quietly eats.
A workaround is a decision nobody made, repeated until it looks like a process.
Where the cost actually hides
The obvious cost is time, and it is usually worse than people think. But three quieter costs do more damage:
- Errors. Every manual re-key is a chance to fat-finger a number. The mistakes you catch cost time. The ones you miss cost trust.
- Key-person risk. When only one person understands the spreadsheet, a holiday or a resignation becomes a crisis.
- A ceiling on growth. A workaround that just about copes at today's volume quietly caps how much more work you can take on.
An illustrative example
Take a 30-person firm where client details are entered once into the CRM and then typed again into the accounts package. At a couple of minutes per record and a few hundred records a month, that is the better part of a day of skilled time every month spent copying data two systems could pass between themselves, plus the occasional transposed figure that takes an afternoon to chase down.
How to find the expensive ones
You do not need a spreadsheet of spreadsheets. Pick one job and follow it from start to finish. Count the times work is handed from one person or system to another. Ask a simple question at each step: what happens if the person who does this is off next week? The steps that make you wince are usually the ones worth fixing.
You do not have to fix all of them
This is the part people get wrong. The goal is not to automate everything tomorrow. It is to find the one workaround that costs the most, fix that, and feel the difference. Then decide whether the next one is worth it. Small changes that pay for themselves beat a grand redesign that never ships.
The short version
- A workaround is the manual glue between systems, or a step the software cannot do yet.
- The real cost is rarely just time. It is errors, key-person risk, and a ceiling on growth.
- Follow one job end to end and count the handovers to find the expensive ones.
- Fix the single most costly one first. You do not have to solve everything at once.
Want this done with you, not to you?
A Workflow Audit finds the costly steps in your business and hands you a prioritised, plain-English plan. Fixed fee, credited in full against any project.