Private & confidential
Where your team's time really goes — and the easiest ways to get it back.
We measured 10 business days across 18 computers — CSRs & Dispatch (6) · Office & Billing (5) · Estimators (4) · Managers (3). Not a survey, not interviews: how the work actually happened.
Things worth knowing
Nothing here is anyone doing a bad job. It's work that repeats, or happens in two places at once — exactly the kind that's easiest to hand off.
Dispatch runs a spreadsheet copy of the board “because it’s faster.” By afternoon the two diverge, and reconciliation becomes tomorrow’s first job.
Job notes and photos sit on tablets until someone types them into an invoice — 2.3 days on average. That’s cash flow parked in a text field.
On the two weather-surge days in the window, hold-time tripled and callbacks queued into evening. Overflow answering + auto-booking is exactly the surge relief.
Estimators rebuild the same sections from old quotes — site notes, photos, and price-book lookups by hand. A draft from the visit data cuts it to review time.
Renewal lists are exported monthly and worked by hand; roughly 1 in 5 lapses quietly. That’s recurring revenue on a sticky note.
Where the day goes
Share of active time by kind of tool, across all 18 measured machines — and where information gets carried by hand between programs.
| Information moves by hand | Into | Times / week |
|---|---|---|
| Phone calls | Field-service platform | 230 |
| Tablet job notes / photos | Invoices | 190 |
| Field-service platform | Excel dispatch board | 150 |
| Field-service platform | 120 | |
| Supplier portals | PO spreadsheet | 90 |
Every row is a person being the integration between two programs. Connect the programs and the row disappears.
The opportunities, ranked
Ordered by where we'd start — payoff weighed against effort. The list adds up to the headline; where two touch the same hours, we sequence them rather than count twice.
| # | Opportunity | Team | Hours/yr | Value/yr | Effort |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | After-call wrap-up and booking drafts for CSRs | CSRs | 590 | $26,550 | quick win |
| 2 | Quotes drafted from site notes, photos, and the price book | Estimators | 470 | $21,150 | quick win |
| 3 | Membership renewals that run themselves | Office | 260 | $11,700 | quick win |
| 4 | Job notes become invoice drafts, same day | Billing | 540 | $24,300 | medium |
| 5 | One dispatch board: the spreadsheet retires | Dispatch | 380 | $17,100 | medium |
| 6 | Permit paperwork prefilled and tracked | Office | 310 | $13,950 | medium |
| 7 | Parts ordering drafted from job data | Ops | 290 | $13,050 | medium |
| 8 | Storm-mode: surge triage + protected dispatcher focus | Dispatch | 860 | $38,700 | bigger project |
| 9 | Instant answers on jobs, techs, and customer history | Everyone | 390 | $17,550 | bigger project |
A simple plan to get started
Start small; let the early wins pay for the bigger steps. The dollar figures are time you get back each year — not what setup costs.
- →After-call wrap-up and booking drafts for CSRs
- →Quotes drafted from site notes, photos, and the price book
- →Membership renewals that run themselves
CSR wrap-ups, quote drafts, renewals — felt before the next weather event.
- →Job notes become invoice drafts, same day
- →One dispatch board: the spreadsheet retires
- →Permit paperwork prefilled and tracked
- →Parts ordering drafted from job data
FSM, invoices, permits, and parts flowing — cash stops parking in text fields.
- →Storm-mode: surge triage + protected dispatcher focus
- →Instant answers on jobs, techs, and customer history
Storm-mode surge handling and company-wide answers — planned before the season peaks.
What year one looks like
Phases come online in months 2, 4, and 8. Monthly run-rate of time recovered, cumulative — conservative by design.
How you compare
Against the typical operation of your size and industry that we measure. Illustrative benchmarks — the point is where you sit, not decimal precision.
| Metric | You | Typical |
|---|---|---|
| Job-done → invoice-sent lag | 2.3 days | Same day (automated shops) |
| Median dispatcher focus | 5 min | 9 min |
| Membership renewal capture | ~80% | 95%+ (automated) |
| FSM API-ready | Yes | Usually |
A day for Dispatcher 1 — before and after
Same person, same job, same morning. The difference is what the systems do on their own.
- ·6:45am — rebuilds the day: FSM board copied into the spreadsheet, techs texted their first calls
- ·All morning — phones + radio + Teams, 5-minute focus stretches
- ·1pm — yesterday’s job notes chased off three tablets for billing
- ·4pm — spreadsheet vs. FSM reconciliation, 40 minutes
- ·Storm days: hold times triple and the evening disappears
- ✓6:45am — one board, already current; techs’ schedules pushed automatically
- ✓Calls arrive summarized with booking drafts — dispatcher confirms exceptions
- ✓Job notes flow to invoice drafts the moment techs close out
- ✓The 4pm reconciliation no longer exists
- ✓Storm mode: overflow answered, triaged, and booked; the dispatcher works the truly urgent
Your systems can already do this
Most of what we found needs connection, not new software. Automated Edge sets these up and runs them for you.
The hub. Three of the five busiest hand-offs point into it.
Same-day invoicing from job data instead of a 2.3-day lag.
Call summaries and booking drafts land in the FSM automatically.
POs drafted from job requirements; the PO spreadsheet retires.
What we measured, computer by computer
Six of the 18 office machines shown (tech tablets measured separately). Roles, never names — the goal is fixing workflows, not scoring people. Click any card for that machine's detail.
How this rolls out without breaking your week
The change-management is the product. Four rules we run every engagement by.
One person per team helps tune their own workflow first and shows the rest. Adoption follows proof, not announcements.
Every automation runs in draft-first mode before it acts — you see what it would have done for a week, then turn it loose.
Each change can be switched off in one step, independently. The old way keeps working until the new way has earned trust.
A standing monthly review: what saved time, what needs tuning, what to add next. The plan updates with the evidence.
| Wk 1–2 | Systems connected read-only; draft-mode assistants watching, not acting |
| Wk 3–4 | Quick wins go live team by team, champions first |
| Wk 5–8 | The system connections: the copying between programs stops |
| Wk 9–12 | First monthly review with measured savings; bigger bets scoped with real usage data |
How this was measured — openly
- ✓Every person was informed in writing before measurement began; signed acknowledgments on file.
- ✓Never captured, at any tier: keystrokes, clipboard contents, email bodies.
- ✓Roles are shown instead of names throughout this report — the goal is fixing workflows, not scoring people.
- ✓All captured data is encrypted, scoped to this company alone, and hard-deleted five business days after this report is delivered.
What happens next
CSR relief, quote drafts, renewals — weeks, not months. The Assessment fee credits against it.
FSM, QuickBooks, phones, and suppliers joined — same-day invoices, one board, tracked permits.
Booked-call rate, invoice lag, renewal capture — reviewed with you monthly, tuned before season.
This is the deliverable the Assessment produces for a business like yours — measured on your machines, tied to ROI, with the consent architecture on every page. The real one is built from your 10 business days.