How to digitise manual processes: find the hours and start small

We often meet the same situation: an owner-manager with 14 open spreadsheets, an inbox full of orders and sticky notes around the edge of the screen. None of these is wrong on its own. The timesheet spreadsheet works, email works, and the notes work for whoever wrote them. The problem appears when the business grows. Data is keyed two or three times, nobody has the full picture, and the one person who understands the big spreadsheet is on holiday. Digitising manual processes means pulling those threads into one system that fits the way you actually work.

What does digitising manual processes mean in practice?

In a smaller business it rarely means a big IT project. It means that one specific task, which today runs through paper, email, phone or spreadsheets, gets its own screen, its own rules and its own connection to the systems you already have. The most common examples we work with are these:

• Timesheets and mileage logs that become payroll and invoices without rekeying.
• Booking and scheduling of staff, routes or rooms.
• Quotes and order confirmations built from a price list and sent for digital signature.
• Order intake from trade customers through an ordering portal.
• Service reports and field checklists with photos and the customer’s signature.
• Onboarding of new customers or employees with documents, access and tasks.
• Reporting where numbers from several systems are compiled by hand every month.

How do you find the processes worth digitising?

The best starting point is a week of logging. Ask each employee to note the tasks that repeat, how long they take, and where the data comes from and goes to. It sounds dull, but it takes ten minutes a day and gives a far more accurate picture than a management meeting. Then look for the classic signs of a process that is ready to be digitised:

1. The same information is keyed into more than one place.
2. The task runs every day or every week and involves several people.
3. There is a spreadsheet only one person understands.
4. Errors are found only when the customer complains or the invoice is wrong.
5. Customers or colleagues call to ask about status.
6. The task is tied to a place, such as an office or a printer.
7. Month-end requires someone to gather numbers from several sources.
8. You cannot answer simple questions such as "how many hours did we spend on customer X last month?"

Every process that hits three or more of these points goes on the list. The big spreadsheet is a particularly common find, and we have a full page on how to replace Excel with a custom system without losing the knowledge built into it.

Questions to ask the people who do the work

• Where does the information come from when you start the task?
• Which systems, spreadsheets or papers do you have open along the way?
• What do you copy from one place to another?
• What most often goes wrong, and how do you notice?
• Which exceptions do you handle that are not written down anywhere?
• Who is waiting for you when you finish, and what do they need?

In practice those six questions give you more than a long requirements document. The answers show where data is rekeyed, where errors arise and which rules exist only in one employee’s head. Write the answers down straight away and use them as the basis for the requirements specification you later send to suppliers. It makes the proposals far easier to compare.

How do you calculate the hours and money saved by digitising?

The formula is simple: times per year × minutes saved each time × number of people ÷ 60 = hours saved per year. Multiply the hours by your internal hourly cost, which is salary plus pension, holiday and overhead. For many Danish SMEs it lands somewhere between DKK 350 and 500. Then add the cost of today’s errors: credit notes, lost orders and the time it takes to clean up. That is often the number that surprises people most.

Note that the monthly report scores low even though it feels heavy. It only runs 12 times a year. Timesheets run every day for every employee, and even a few minutes saved add up to many hours. Frequency nearly always beats time per case, which is why it is the column to be most honest about.

Worked example: an installation firm with 25 employees

Take an installation firm with 25 technicians who record hours and materials on paper. Each technician spends around 10 minutes a day on the sheet and on calling in with questions. A digital timesheet on the phone realistically saves 6 of those minutes: 25 × 6 minutes × 220 working days = 550 hours a year. In the office, one person currently spends 6 hours a week collecting the sheets, keying them and raising invoices. With automatic transfer to accounting, that drops to 1 hour: 5 hours × 46 weeks = 230 hours. In total around 780 hours a year. At an internal hourly cost of DKK 400 that is about DKK 312,000 a year, before you count faster invoicing and fewer forgotten materials.

Which tool should you choose: off-the-shelf, automation or your own system?

Most businesses end up with a mix: off-the-shelf systems for bookkeeping and payroll, automations between them, and a system of their own for the part of the business that is truly theirs. If you see subscriptions piling up, read our guide on own system vs SaaS subscriptions. If it is mostly about moving data between existing systems, see our page on automation.

Why do digitisation projects stall?

When we see projects stall, the cause is nearly always one of the same five things, and all of them can be avoided if you know them in advance:

• The first phase is too large. "The whole business at once" takes a year, and nobody sees the benefit along the way.
• The current process is digitised with all its detours. Clean up the process before it is built.
• Employees were not asked, and the system lacks the exceptions that fill everyday work.
• Nobody owns the project internally, so decisions wait for weeks.
• There is no before-and-after measurement, so nobody can prove it worked and the next phase is never approved.

How do you start small with digitisation?

That is how we have worked with Vaskekonerne, a cleaning company where we have built eight solutions in one circuit over time, from website and booking to operations. Each solution builds on the previous one, so data is keyed only once. That approach is far less risky than one big project, because each part has to prove its worth before the next is built.

What does it cost to digitise a process?

A scoped solution for one process, such as digital timesheets with transfer to e-conomic, often fits within our web packages: Small at DKK 18,000 plus DKK 600 a month with 12 features and 1 integration, or Medium at DKK 36,000 plus DKK 900 a month with 24 features and 2 integrations. If staff need an app in the field, our mobile packages start at DKK 28,000 plus DKK 1,200 a month. The monthly price covers hosting, maintenance, updates, support, security and backups. Compare that with the calculation from your own scoring table, and check whether an SMV:Digital grant can cover part of the investment.

If your biggest time sink is orders from trade customers, read on in the guide to B2B ecommerce and ordering portals. If you have found your first process, describe it here and you will get a written fixed-price proposal within 24 hours.