I'm too busy to look at that right now!

When you are working with a system that saves time and money you always need to know about the return on investment. For companies that are incredibly busy it can seem difficult to slow down enough to look at implementing a new system. However the figures just stack up in favour of getting stuck in ...

Our clients tell us they are saving between 20% and 80% of the time they usually take in preparing their assessment and inspection reports. This is through a move away from pen, paper and digital camera to using a tablet or cellphone and our report writing software.

These savings depend on various factors such as complexity, size of Assessment etc. So the Assessment Ninja ran this through a model to look at how much time was being recovered through use of the Clarinspect system.

Time to recoup investment

What is of interest is how long until:

• The relative cost of staff effort on the project is recouped
• Any backlog in assessment activities is cleared and more work is getting done
• Once project costs are recouped what is the saving from using the system in business as usual?

A thorny maths problem as each working day for a member of staff has to be 8 hours or under to be realistic. However the Assessment Ninja is up for such challenges.

The Results

First let's look at staff doing shorter duration inspections or assessments. With this scenario you can see a productivity improvement in the core business area as more assessments can be done in the time saved from the report writing process.

For example staff working in Local Authority compliance tend to be able to do about 10 manual inspections a day. If each one takes half an hour with 20 minutes writeup it makes for a full day. 

At the beginning of the project to trial Clarinspect, staff spend time on the project and are slower undertaking the inspection, but after the first week, project training etc is over, and the speed of usage in the field picks up.

The table below indicates that if the time saving were used to do more assessments how long it would take to catch up on lost work. Each row shows how this varies as a function of time saved on the write up.

The first row shows that staff currently do 50 assessments a week.

At a 50% saving on writeup time this is equivalent to saving 360 working hours per year (or $36K at $100/hour) per assessor in terms of time recouped from wasted activity. Interestingly this is what is reported by some of our clients (others are closer to 80%)

For staff that spend more time on assessments (i.e. if an assessment takes 3 hours on site with an hour for write up) then it is unlikely that they can get more on-site assessments done per day, but they are freed from the the bulk of the documentation so can take part in more productive, or profitable activities. 

If there were such a thing as a fractional assessment then the results would be as below.

At a 50% saving on writeup time this is equivalent to saving 240 working hours per year (6 working weeks or $24K at $100/hour) per assessor in terms of time recouped from wasted activity.

You can see that with a number of Inspectors or Assessors in the field that the numbers really start to mount up in terms of available resource that can be applied elsewhere in the business, or as direct cost savings.

The savings - and the costs!

Any exploration of new technology requires client staff engagement, and hence time. This cost has to be taken into account when looking at the overall return on investment.

Any model investigating savings has to consider that staff are learning to use a new tool - moving from pen and paper to tablet or cellphone. Initially an assessment or inspection may take slightly longer, but this will tail off as the user becomes familiar with the system.

To make any model more realistic the time that staff are consuming in engaging with the project (meetings, training, workshops etc) takes away from time best used for undertaking assessments - so a reduction in the number of assessments has to be included at the beginning of a trial.

A stitch in time really does save nine

With salaried staff as a cost centre you are looking not at real cash in the door necessarily, but redeployed staff effort into other areas - so a net gain in productivity. If you use contract staff then there is a direct saving on the bottom line - fewer hours to pay for.

Either way, with a payback period in terms of days or weeks - and depending on the type of Assessment the payback could be within the timescale of a trial - this shows that there really is no time like the present to make a change.