Example action plan · Industrial equipment and service contracts
Data entry consumes the equivalent of seventeen sales roles.
Recover eleven without recruiting.
Each of this mid-sized company’s 96 salespeople and account managers loses 6.3 hours a week to data entry, searching and chasing: 605 hours a week, equivalent to seventeen full-time roles. The first workstream aims to recover eleven. Here is how 284 interviews inform five workstreams and five decisions on hiring, tools and reorganisation.
315
315
315
People invited · 14 branches and 2 factories
284
284
284
Interviews in three days · ≈90% participation
227
227
227
Improvement suggestions
28
28
28
Opportunities identified · three areas to explore
A composite example based on Spentia engagements. Headcounts and amounts have been adjusted.
AT A GLANCE
Five workstreams.
Five decisions to make.
Five workstreams.
Five decisions to make.
Five workstreams.
Five decisions to make.
The plan builds on four strengths to preserve: salespeople who protect their customers, product and service expertise valued by customers, sales and operations teams who cooperate without personal conflict, and proven local practices.
1 · Free up selling time. Record the requirement once, from the on-site trial to invoicing; define what a file must contain before handover to sales administration; establish one reporting view; automate CRM workflows. ≈ €690k/year
2 · Remove the quoting bottleneck. Set value-based thresholds, a fast track below the threshold and a guaranteed turnaround for product codes. ≈ €270k/year
3 · Deliver on the promise, from quote to cash. Appoint one process owner, check invoices against contracts before issue and require operations approval before committing to a date. ≈ €220k/year
4 · Train salespeople using the expertise of the best performers. Interviews with top salespeople become the onboarding programme, then a training assistant. ≈ €130k/year, plus earlier sales by new recruits
5 · Treat a salesperson’s warning like a customer complaint. Respond to every internal alert within 72 hours; flag missed service the next day, before the customer calls. ≈ €90k/year, plus avoided credit notes
These estimates total around €1.4m/year. Effects on cash collection, contract cancellations and stalled revenue are not added. Conservative estimates of expected annual gains once fully implemented.
Five proposed decisions for the executive team.
Five proposed decisions for the executive team.
1. Before recruiting: treat selling time as the scarce resource and train new recruits using the expertise of your best existing salespeople.
2. Before buying a quoting tool: segment the queue by value and delegate approval thresholds.
3. Before reorganising: appoint one quote-to-cash process owner and treat a salesperson’s warning like a customer complaint, starting in week one.
4. Before buying AI: place the data and AI roadmap under sales leadership.
5. Choose the first commercial opportunity to prototype within 90 days.
01 · THE CONTEXT
Orders coming in.
Selling time slipping away.
Orders coming in.
Selling time slipping away.
Orders coming in.
Selling time slipping away.
This mid-sized company designs, sells and maintains industrial process equipment, with a service contract for every installation. Each sale involves an on-site trial: the equipment is tested on the customer’s parts under their operating conditions before a quote is issued. Two factories manufacture the equipment; fourteen regional branches install, maintain and repair it. The company migrated its CRM ten months ago, recruited in a tight market for technical salespeople and introduced a structured sales method supported by tools. Yet orders are growing more slowly than the pipeline, quotes are waiting and invoices are being challenged. Before choosing between hiring, tools and reorganisation, sales leadership wanted to know what was consuming selling time and how to free it up.
The interviews cover around 90% of the agreed scope, with a median of 38 conversational turns. They provide an in-depth view of internal operations. The evidence remains self-reported: customers’ views are known only through the teams, and estimates must be checked against company data. This is a composite case based on several Spentia engagements. The mechanisms and interview quotes are faithfully represented; headcounts and amounts have been adjusted.
02 · THE EXECUTIVE DECISION BRIEF · FIVE PAGES TO SUPPORT DECISIONS
What an executive team receives
to make decisions.
What an executive team receives
to make decisions.
What an executive team receives
to make decisions.
The executive decision brief brings together the strengths to preserve, causes of bottlenecks, estimated costs and proposed decisions. It distinguishes expected gains from effects still to be measured. The report details the findings and calculations behind them.
1. What works
1. What works
The interviews identify four strengths. Salespeople shield customers from internal delays, at the cost of hours no one counts. Customers spontaneously cite product and service expertise as reasons to stay. Sales and operations point to the system rather than blaming individuals: tension is described as a visibility problem, not a lack of cooperation. Proven local practices also exist: one branch prioritises interventions by customer impact, while a weekly committee has cut product-code creation time to a quarter of its previous level. The plan builds on these strengths to address organisational bottlenecks.
2. What holds the business back, and what it costs
2. What holds the business back, and what it costs
The direct cost of friction is conservatively estimated at around €2.2m/year, after removing double counting. Each finding is summarised here and examined in section 3.
≈ €1.31m/year · Diaries are full, but only a third of the week goes to customers. Salespeople and account managers re-enter data, search and chase: 6.3 hours per person per week after the conservative adjustment. Across 96 people, this is 605 hours a week, equivalent to seventeen 35-hour full-time roles and €1.11m. The remainder comes from duplicate entry in sales administration and sales managers rechecking figures. The theme appears in 187 of the 284 interviews. “A daily struggle with cumbersome procedures that waste an enormous amount of time.” (a salesperson)
≈ €470k/year · Quotes wait between estimating and approval, with no visibility of their status. A finding absent from the stated priorities: complex estimates depend on one person, approval on another, and an €800 quote waits behind an €80,000 quote (101 interviews). “We send the offer long after the customer asks for it. That puts us at a disadvantage against competitors.” (a salesperson)
≈ €445k/year · Billing problems return as disputes and credit notes, and salespeople have to resolve them. Eight out of ten disputes originate in an internal data-entry error. Credit notes take weeks, while the salesperson reassures the customer instead of selling (108 interviews). “The customer never sees the internal delays.” (an account manager)
Three findings · ≈ €2.2m/year
Three findings · ≈ €2.2m/year
Selling time — ≈ €1.31m/year
Quotes on hold — ≈ €470k/year
Billing bottlenecks — ≈ €445k/year
96 people × 6.3 hours = 605 hours/week ≈ 17 full-time roles absorbed. Workstream 1: 375 hours/week potentially recovered ≈ 11 roles.
Direct cost after removing double counting: ≈ €2.2m/year. Gross total before adjustment: ≈ €3.0m.
Each amount uses the lower end of its range, after applying a conservative adjustment factor of 0.7 to reported time. Findings are linked to interview quotes; their monetary values rely on the report’s calculation assumptions (appendices B and C).
Assumptions behind the figures. A fully loaded hourly cost of €40, to be confirmed using HR data; every total varies proportionally with this rate. Other assumptions: 46 working weeks; a 0.7 adjustment factor applied to all reported time; extrapolation from 284 interviews to the 315 employees within scope; and the lower end of every range. Wider costs—stalled revenue, cancellations, tied-up cash and business lost through delays—are excluded from the totals.
3. The potential
3. The potential
Of the estimated €2.2m/year in direct costs, the programme targets ≈ €1.27m/year recoverable (57%) at the rate reached after 12 months, plus ≈ €130k/year in new recruits’ payroll costs, outside the direct-cost total. These gains remain to be verified after implementation. They value hours at their fully loaded cost: redeployed selling capacity, not cash savings, unless hiring is avoided. Revenue from additional meetings, orders and collections is not added.
Workstream 1 targets 375 hours a week returned to salespeople and account managers, equivalent to eleven full-time roles. Recruiting eleven salespeople would take a year of searching in a tight market, then six months of onboarding each. The workstream returns time to people who already know the customers, without an onboarding delay.
4. The five priority workstreams
4. The five priority workstreams
Impact and feasibility · five workstreams
Impact and feasibility · five workstreams
Qualitative positioning of the workstreams and their findings.
High impact · medium feasibility
Remove the quoting bottleneck: findings 2 and 4. Deliver on the promise: findings 3, 6, 7 and 12.
High impact · high feasibility
Free up selling time: findings 1, 5, 9 and 11.
Moderate impact · low feasibility
Variable pay: finding 10, a governance decision.
Moderate impact · high feasibility
Train using top performers’ expertise: finding 13. Act on internal alerts: finding 8.
Free up selling time. Record the requirement once, from the on-site trial to invoicing; standardise sales administration files; establish one reliable reporting view; automate CRM workflows. ≈ €690k, plus additional customer meetings
Remove the quoting bottleneck. Value-based thresholds, a fast track below the threshold, product codes within a guaranteed turnaround and assisted quoting. ≈ €270k, plus business won through faster responses
Deliver on the promise, from quote to cash. One process owner, invoice checks against contracts before issue, weekly review of uninvoiced quotes and operations approval before any date commitment. ≈ €220k, plus protected cash flow and contracts
Train salespeople using the expertise of the best performers. Interviews with top salespeople describe, with dates and examples, how they prepare an on-site trial, defend a price and secure approval. This becomes an onboarding kit in their own words, then a training assistant (stage 3 of the AI roadmap) that answers new salespeople using experienced colleagues’ language. Today, a recruit takes six months to close their first deal. ≈ €130k in payroll made productive sooner—eight hires a year, each reaching productivity three months earlier—plus earlier sales
Treat a salesperson’s warning like a customer complaint. Today, an internal warning from a salesperson or technician waits, while a formal customer complaint prompts a response within hours. The workstream changes the rule: every alert concerning a customer file gets an owner and a response within 72 hours. A missed service triggers an alert the next day and proactive contact before the customer calls. ≈ €90k in selling time recovered, plus avoided credit notes and protected contracts
Rounded gains from the five workstreams total ≈ €1.4m: ≈ €1.27m from direct costs (57%) and ≈ €130k from new recruits becoming productive sooner, outside the direct-cost total. Section 4.6 of the full report uses the same figure.
The programme targets an annualised gain of €405k/year by week six, €1.04m/year by month six and €1.4m/year by month 12, against estimated cumulative implementation costs of €660k. These annualised figures describe the expected rate at each milestone, not gains realised during the period. Payback timing will depend on expenditure and the pace of implementation. The assessment and action plan fee is outside this calculation.
5. The five decisions
5. The five decisions
1 · Before recruiting, treat selling time as the company’s scarce resource and train new recruits using the expertise of your best existing salespeople. Launch workstream 1 with one owner for the data-entry process from on-site trial to invoice; start workstream 4 in month 2. Another recruit would lose the same 6.3 hours a week and take six months to close a deal. Workstreams 1 and 4 aim to recover eleven full-time equivalents and halve the time to a first sale.
2 · Before buying a quoting tool, manage quoting as a process rather than relying on individual expertise. Segment the queue by value, delegate approval thresholds and record the requirement once. A tool connected to an unsegmented queue would produce quotes faster, only to reach the same approval bottleneck.
3 · Before reorganising, appoint one quote-to-cash process owner and treat a salesperson’s warning like a customer complaint. Hold a daily twenty-minute review of blocked files, check invoices against contracts before issue, require operations approval for any date and respond to internal alerts within 72 hours, starting in week 1. Reorganising without these changes would shift files between departments without reducing the waits for answers. A blocked file needs an owner and a response date, not a new organisation chart.
4 · Before buying AI, place data and AI decisions under sales leadership. Use the governance described in section 4, with stage 1 starting in month 3, after fixing the workflows.
5 · Choose the first commercial opportunity to prototype within 90 days, from the three opportunities detailed in section 5 of the full report.
6. Conditions for success
6. Conditions for success
An executive team sponsor who is visible to sales teams: employees will judge the programme’s seriousness by the seniority of its sponsor.
A published baseline from horizon 1: two weeks of measurement using existing timestamps, covering selling time, quote turnaround, invoice error rates and forecast-to-actual differences. Without it, unrecorded hours spent absorbing problems would hide gains just as they currently hide losses. Horizon 1 removes tasks from salespeople; it adds none.
A short monthly review to resolve difficulties and track indicators: credibility comes from consistency, beyond the launch.
A separate confidential channel for workload and fairness concerns, running alongside the programme but independent of it.
Every finding can be traced to the interview quotes behind it and is costed conservatively. The executive team decides which opportunity to pursue first; the report that follows sets out its scale and sequence.
03 · THE FINDINGS
Thirteen findings. Three costed.
All traceable.
Thirteen findings. Three costed.
All traceable.
Thirteen findings. Three costed.
All traceable.
Reported friction was grouped into five categories and costed item by item: ≈ €3.0m in gross totals. After removing double counting at root-cause level, the retained direct cost is ≈ €2.2m: each lost hour is counted once. Detailed calculations appear in appendix B of the full report.
No.
1
Type
Confirmation
Finding
Diaries are full, but only a third of the week goes to customers
Evidence strength
●●●●●
Priority
●●●●●
Direct cost
≈ €1.31m/year
No.
2
Type
New insight
Finding
Quotes wait between estimating and approval, with no visibility of their status
Evidence strength
●●●●○
Priority
●●●●●
Direct cost
≈ €470k/year
No.
3
Type
New insight
Finding
Sales commits to dates that operations has not approved
Evidence strength
●●●●○
Priority
●●●●○
Direct cost
(included in #1 and #6)
No.
4
Type
New insight
Finding
A missing product code blocks the offer, order and invoice
Evidence strength
●●●●○
Priority
●●●●●
Direct cost
(systemic)
No.
5
Type
Confirmation
Finding
Information entered for a sale is re-entered by sales administration, then billing
Evidence strength
●●●●●
Priority
●●●○○
Direct cost
(included in #1)
No.
6
Type
Confirmation
Finding
Billing problems return as disputes and credit notes, and salespeople have to resolve them
Evidence strength
●●●●●
Priority
●●●●○
Direct cost
≈ €445k/year
No.
7
Type
New insight
Finding
The sale is made but the money has not arrived: approved quotes never invoiced, invoiced services never delivered
Evidence strength
●●●○○
Priority
●●●●○
Direct cost
(systemic)
No.
8
Type
New insight
Finding
Salespeople report the problem, but it takes a customer complaint to trigger action
Evidence strength
●●●●○
Priority
●●●●○
Direct cost
(amplifying factor)
No.
9
Type
Refinement
Finding
The CRM is only as useful as the information people have time to enter: the cost lies in the workflow
Evidence strength
●●●●●
Priority
●●●●○
Direct cost
(included in #1)
No.
10
Type
Refinement
Finding
Variable pay rewards this month’s signed deal, not the service that retains the customer
Evidence strength
●●●○○
Priority
●●●○○
Direct cost
(systemic)
No.
11
Type
Confirmation
Finding
We prospect companies that cannot buy, using incomplete records and an overlong questionnaire
Evidence strength
●●●●○
Priority
●●●○○
Direct cost
(included in #1)
No.
12
Type
Confirmation
Finding
What we forecast at the start of the month does not hold up at month-end
Evidence strength
●●●○○
Priority
●●○○○
Direct cost
(included in #3)
No.
13
Type
Confirmation
Finding
A completed hire does not tell us when the new salesperson will work independently
Evidence strength
●●●●○
Priority
●●●●○
Direct cost
(amplifying factor)
This classification shows the assessment’s added value finding by finding. A confirmation supports leadership’s intuition and clarifies its operational consequences. A new insight reveals a blind spot: here, dates promised without approval and internal alerts that trigger no action, neither appearing in the stated priorities. A refinement helps prevent misdirected investment. Finding 9 is the clearest example: changing the CRM again would not return time to salespeople, because the problem lies in the workflow feeding it.
Evidence strength: convergence of interview responses, measured by the number of interviews and diversity of functions reporting them. Priority: impact, feasibility and effects on other findings.
Detailed example, finding 6: billing problems return as disputes and credit notes, and salespeople have to resolve them
Detailed example, finding 6: billing problems return as disputes and credit notes, and salespeople have to resolve them
What teams report. The theme appears in 108 of the 284 interviews, most strongly in billing and collections (11 of 11 interviews), among account managers (31 of 35) and branch managers (17 of 21). An incomplete contract in the new CRM, or an order sent to the ERP with an approximate product code because the correct one is missing, produces an incorrect invoice. The customer disputes it; a credit note awaits approval for weeks. Meanwhile, the salesperson cannot close further business with that customer and spends calls reassuring them. Eight out of ten disputes have an internal cause. The overloaded collections team manually extracts its lists every morning. One documented case: an offer ready for signature was blocked for nearly two months by a pricing error inherited from the CRM migration.
“When information is missing, we do not always notice before invoicing. And when an invoice goes out with the wrong quantities, we have to issue a credit note.” (a billing administrator) “We need a precise check so we do not miss services the customer has scheduled and is paying for.” (a key account manager) “It brings the sales cycle to a halt. A few days lost can quickly push it into the following month.” (a salesperson)
What the figures show. Consolidated direct cost: ≈ €445k/year. Handling disputes and credit notes, including manual extraction: ≈ €125k; selling time spent reassuring customers and securing corrections: ≈ €195k; corrections by operations and sales administration before reissue: ≈ €125k. The wider cost is excluded: the value of credit notes, cash tied up in disputes, completed services never invoiced and contracts cancelled after an incorrect invoice. Quantifying it would require credit-note rates by cause and time from invoice to payment, beyond the interview scope. The full report lists these among the first data to collect.
Why it happens. Errors are detected downstream, by management control or the customer, rather than before issue: no check compares the contract with the invoice. The salesperson absorbs the consequences, taking the call, securing the correction, negotiating the credit note and keeping the problem out of sight. Satisfaction indicators stay green; the hours accumulate without a category in the CRM.
How it spreads. Incomplete file or approximate product code → incorrect invoice → dispute → credit note awaiting approval → further sales on the account put on hold → salesperson reassures instead of selling → trust erodes → contract cancelled at renewal. Functions involved: sales → sales administration → billing → customer → account manager → collections. Finding 8 makes this worse: the account manager’s alert triggers nothing until the customer formally complains. Workstream 5 addresses that specific step.
What to verify. Invoice error rate on first issue; number and value of credit notes by cause; share of the portfolio in dispute; invoice-to-payment time; and the number of actions triggered by a complaint rather than an internal alert over 90 days.
The sequence: where to start, what can wait and what is not worth the effort.
The sequence: where to start, what can wait and what is not worth the effort.
Actions follow their operational dependencies and address the original choice between hiring, tools and reorganisation.
Free up time before recruiting: another recruit would inherit the same one-third of a week with customers, after six months of onboarding. Workstream 1 targets eleven full-time equivalents returned to people who already know the customers. Fix the queue before adding tools: assisted quoting connected to an unsegmented queue and scattered reference data would produce drafts faster before the same approval bottleneck. Appoint an owner before reorganising: a blocked file needs an owner and a response date; a new organisation chart provides neither.
The sequence covers three horizons: short term (horizon 1), medium term and long term. Horizon 1 removes bottlenecks and, crucially, establishes the baseline. Hours silently absorbed (finding 8) hide internal costs behind good customer indicators. Without a baseline, gains in later horizons would remain invisible.
Financial summary
Financial summary
Expected annual gain at this milestone, conservative estimate
End of week 6
≈ €405k
End of month 6
≈ €1.04m
End of month 12
≈ €1.4m
Share of direct costs (€2.2m)
End of week 6
~18%
End of month 6
~45%
End of month 12
~57%
Cumulative implementation cost
End of week 6
≈ €40k
End of month 6
≈ €280k
End of month 12
≈ €660k
Evidence level
End of week 6
Supported by evidence
End of month 6
Evidence-supported to inferred
End of month 12
Inferred to hypothetical
The share of direct costs excludes the €130k from workstream 4, which concerns new recruits’ payroll rather than lost hours within the assessment scope.
Opportunities: what teams identified and what still needs testing.
Opportunities: what teams identified and what still needs testing.
The 28 commercial signals in the interviews point to three opportunities, presented as hypotheses to test, not confirmed launches. One is detailed here.
Opportunity 1 · Packaged offers with service commitments. Two facts underpin the idea: around forty product codes generate 80% of revenue, and teams report customers effectively asking for “a firm price and lead time, without a new quote every time”. The market: small and mid-sized industrial businesses without large purchasing teams, for whom predictability is worth a discount. Prerequisites: a pricing reference maintained by a named owner (workstream 2) and product codes provided within a guaranteed turnaround (finding 4). First step: three packages, two willing branches, 90 days and no pricing commitment beyond the pilot. This could turn a source of bottlenecks into a selling point, subject to validating margins per package and customer interest.
Opportunity 2 · Online customer tracking. A portal where customers track requests, service visits, invoices and credit notes: information they already request from account managers by phone.
Opportunity 3 · An availability-based contract. Charge for equipment availability rather than each service visit, in exchange for a multi-year commitment: the budget visibility smaller accounts seek and the workload visibility operations needs.
04 · AUTOMATION
What AI can take on,
activity by activity.
What AI can take on,
activity by activity.
What AI can take on,
activity by activity.
Why address organisation before AI?
Why address organisation before AI?
This is separate from Aria, the AI that conducted the assessment interviews. The stages below are uses recommended for the company’s own workflows once those workflows have been fixed. Assisted quoting and CRM automation require a maintained pricing reference, requirements recorded once and a standard file for handover from sales to sales administration. With these foundations, AI can search, compile and prefill reliable information. An agent connected to outdated records works from outdated records.
Gains from stages 1–3 are already included in the programme totals. Stage 4 depends on the data and is excluded from the totals shown.
The four stages
The four stages
Stage
1 · Assisted quoting
Scope
Generate quotes from requirements recorded once and the pricing reference; assemble tender responses using approved clauses and references; check consistency of prices and product codes before sending
Timing
Months 3–6
Investment
€50–80k
Annual gain (conservative / realistic)
€120k / €180k
Stage
2 · CRM workflow automation
Scope
Prepare customer visits using customer history, service visits and invoices; suggest follow-ups and meeting notes; capture information once through dictation or extraction from exchanges; transfer orders automatically to the ERP
Timing
Months 6–10
Investment
€70–110k
Annual gain (conservative / realistic)
€160k / €240k
Stage
3 · A training assistant built on top salespeople’s expertise
Scope
Interviews with top salespeople, organised by situation—preparing an on-site trial, defending a price, handling an objection and securing approval—become a knowledge base that new salespeople query in natural language, with sources cited. The sales manager approves each situation before publication.
Timing
Months 6–9
Investment
€40–70k
Annual gain (conservative / realistic)
€80k / €120k
Stage
4 · Workload and collections forecasting
Scope
Reconcile sales forecasts with production capacity; detect invoices at risk of dispute before issue; prioritise collections by risk
Timing
Months 10–15
Investment
€90–140k
Annual gain (conservative / realistic)
Dependent on data: hypothesis to validate
What AI will never commit to. A promise to the customer—a date, price or condition—remains the salesperson’s decision and personal responsibility. By design, no stage of this roadmap transfers that authority to AI. AI prepares, estimates, flags, suggests and trains; it makes no commitments.
05 · WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
What you would receive,
for your situation.
What you would receive,
for your situation.
What you would receive,
for your situation.
LET’S TALK
An initial conversation with a partner
What decision would you like to make with greater clarity?
In a 30-minute conversation with a partner, we can clarify your challenge, the teams involved and what this approach could offer you.
Leave your contact details to arrange an initial conversation.
Prefer email? Write to us here
or get in touch on social media.
LET’S TALK
An initial conversation with a partner
What decision would you like to make with greater clarity?
In a 30-minute conversation with a partner, we can clarify your challenge, the teams involved and what this approach could offer you.
Leave your contact details to arrange an initial conversation.
Prefer email? Write to us here
or get in touch on social media.
LET’S TALK
An initial conversation with a partner
What decision would you like to make with greater clarity?
In a 30-minute conversation with a partner, we can clarify your challenge, the teams involved and what this approach could offer you.
Leave your contact details to arrange an initial conversation.
Prefer email? Write to us here
or get in touch on social media.
