Most businesses are wildly inefficient. Manual tasks and processes absorb your team’s time, keeping them from focusing on what really matters. These costs add up, wasting vital resources to keep your business competitive. Streamlining your systems with automation and integration can make drastic changes in your organization.

However, getting buy-in from leadership can be tricky. Onboarding new systems require time and financial investment. Still, with the right data, you can quickly convince your team to start improving your workflows.

To make that conversation easier, lean on these 47 critical process improvement statistics that illustrate why your organization needs to start optimizing workflows today.

Customers Expect More from Businesses

  • 54% of customers have higher expectations for customer service today than they did one year ago. - Customer Thermometer
  • 55% of customers are less likely to engage with a company after a bad mobile experience. - Super Office
  • 76% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations. And 66% are ready to leave if they feel that they’re treated like a number instead of an individual. - Salesforce
  • 73% of companies with above-average customer experience are more profitable than competitors. - Experience Matters
  • Businesses prioritizing the customer experience are 60% more profitable than those that don’t. - SuperOffice
  • Customers in America will pay 17% more to purchase from a company that provides better customer service. - American Express

Employee Productivity and Workflows Suffer

  • The average office worker is productive for 2 hours 53 minutes out of a working day. - Voucher Cloud
  • Executives spend 16 hours a week on administrative work. - Service Now
  • Employees spend 1.8 hours daily (9.3 hours a week) searching and gathering information. - McKinsey
  • Most employees spend 30 hours each month in meetings. - Atlassian
  • The average employee spends 4.1 hours a day checking their inbox. - Washington Post
  • 14% of telecommuters are more productive than office-bound employees. - Stanford University
  • American companies lose $65B due to employee sleep deprivation annually. - Harvard University
  • 41% of stressed workers say stress leads to a loss in productivity. - Colonial Life

Manual Data Entry Prevents Process Optimization

  • 60% - 73% of data within an enterprise goes unused by analytics. - Forrester
  • Over 90% of all spreadsheets have errors in them. - MarketWatch
  • Even tested and proven spreadsheets have errors in 1% of all formula cells. - Market Watch
  • Organizations lose $13.3 million annually on average due to bad data. - Gartner
  • Over 77% of organizations believe they’ve lost revenue due to data issues. - CIO
  • Employees waste up to 50% of their day managing menial data entry and management tasks. - MIT Sloan
  • Bad data eats up between 20% - 30% of operating expenses for organizations on average. - Pragmatic Works
  • On average, 40% of leads are invalid, incomplete, or duplicates. - Integrate

Process Automation Is Critical to Improving Workflows

  • Businesses waste between 32% - 41% of their software budget on features or platforms they don’t need or use. Roughly $259 per desktop worldwide. - 1E
  • Out of 20 companies surveyed, 55% had returns of $100,000 - $500,000 from business process management improvements made. - Gartner
  • In 60% of jobs, one-third of the tasks required by employees could be automated. - McKinsey
  • 54% of employees believe they can save 2 hours of work each day through automation. - Work Market
  • 78% of business leaders said they can save 3 hours of work a day. - Work Market
  • ERP software can reduce operational costs by as much as 23% and administration costs by as much as 22%. - G2
  • CRM software can earn a business around $8.71 for every dollar spent. - Nucleus Report
  • Automating the onboarding process can save HR departments 50% or roughly $5,000 for every 30 employees hired. - Greenhouse
  • Companies that use automation can expect to see revenue increases of around 32% by 2022. - Accenture

Ineffient Processes Lead to Employee Churn

  • 62% of small business owners work more than 50 hours a week - Gallup
  • The median cost of turnover is around 21% of an employee’s annual salary - The Center for American Progress
  • It takes 8 months for a new employee to reach maximum productivity levels - HBR
  • 63.3% of business owners state that it’s harder to keep employees than hire them, with 68.3% experiencing turnover in the last 12 months. - Zenefits
  • 1 in 3 business leaders expect employees to stay for less than one year. - Zenefits
  • 72% of small business owners feel overwhelmed by roles and responsibilities. - The Alternative Board

Software Is Critical to Process Improvement

  • The number of software apps deployed across large firms increased by over 68% between 2015 - 2019, with companies using an average of 129 apps. - Okta Inc.
  • Global IT spending on enterprise software continues to increase with a predicted 8.8% growth between 2020 and 2021. - Statista
  • 80% of businesses in North America and Europe expect year-over-year tech spending to stay the same or increase. - SWZD
  • The average median price of custom application development is $171,450. - Clutch
  • Cost for custom applications can vary between $15,000 (for simple freelance apps) $200,000+ (for enterprise applications). - Innovation
  • Expected time to complete custom applications 3 - 4 months for simple applications and over 8 months for a full custom enterprise app. - Innovation
  • On average, businesses spend $3.61 per line of code to maintain systems and manage technical debt annually. - CastSoftware
  • Low-code application platforms can help users build custom software solutions 10x faster than traditional software development. - Forrester
  • 24% of low code users had no background in code. - Mendix
  • 65% of app development will be on low code platforms by 2024. - Gartner

For a deeper dive into low-code facts and statistics, check out our resource here.

The Biggest Obstacle to Change

The fastest way to succeed is to focus on what you’re good at and delegate everything else. Most executives and many in leadership know this. And yet, they still struggle with letting go of the reigns.

The truth is that if you want to streamline your business and steal back your time, you need to focus on what you do best. Outsource the rest.

While you can improve your systems and workflows, it requires an extra push that you may not have the bandwidth for right now.

Still, continuing down your current path means bleeding out money while slowly poisoning your workplace culture. After all, no one wants to work with a company that forces them to work continuously without an end in sight.

Remember: You can’t sprint a marathon.

How to Streamline Process Improvement

Rather than try to improve your existing systems in-house, further straining your depleted team, you should outsource your business process optimization to a team of qualified tech consultants.

“At least 40% of all businesses will die in the next 10 years… if they don’t figure out how to change their entire company to accommodate new technologies.” — John Chambers, Cisco System

At Quandary Consulting Group, we untangle growing businesses from their inefficient systems. Our integration and application experts build custom solutions rapidly that yield high returns.

As a result, our clients become long-term partners, trusting us to find ways that help them steal back more time from their businesses.

See how we've helped our clients improve their businesses and get insane ROIs by checking out our case studies below.