The Cost of Ignoring Time — Not All Savings Wear a £ Sign

Unlike your cost-cutting workstreams that give immediate financial returns (cut a supplier, slash a service, end a contract, and boom—money saved), digital workstreams need time.

Hi friends,

You know that feeling when something that usually takes an hour is done in 15 minutes? You may not get a receipt for the time you saved, but omo that gain is real. Now imagine if your organisation could do the same thing every day.

This week, I want to talk about something that’s often overlooked in improvement work - TIME.

In projects where finance is the driver, time can feel like the underappreciated sibling who always does the heavy lifting but gets no credit at the family party.

Finance will collect awards, take selfies, and walk away with all the souvenirs. Meanwhile, time is standing in the corner like, “Ah-ah, did I not do anything?”

I’m not blaming Finance. I honestly understand why it is that way.

Finance doesn’t like vague savings. They want actual numbers, receipts, and decimal points, and rightly so.

But here's where it gets interesting. Not every saving wears a £ sign on its forehead. Some savings are dressed in jeans and a T-shirt or hoodie, quietly doing their work; especially when it comes to operational digital transformation workstreams like voice recognition, digital dictation, or even generative AI.

These workstreams are not plug-and-play. Unlike your cost-cutting workstreams that give immediate financial returns (cut a supplier, slash a service, end a contract, and boom, money saved), digital workstreams need time. They usually start by giving time savings, then productivity gains, and only eventually will those translate into financial value.

Bro, if you don’t track or measure the time, how will you ever connect the dots to cost?

Here’s what I mean.

For instance, in an insurance renewals team, let’s say each renewals agent spends 1.5 minutes manually typing up post-call summaries. You introduce digital dictation, and it now takes 30 seconds. That’s 1 minute saved per call.

Multiply that by 100 calls a day per agent, across 50 agents. That’s 5,000 minutes a day! This equates to over 83 hours daily. Are you telling me that doesn’t matter? Huh?

This is not leading to anyone’s sack, but there will be fewer overtime hours needed, happier staff, and better call quality will reduce future costs. If nothing else, it’ll keep HR from planning yet another "staff retention" workshop.

Also, consider a junior doctor who spends 30 minutes writing notes by hand. You probably implement ambient AI. Now the same job takes about 10 minutes.

Does it mean we’ll reduce staff? No. But that extra time means more patients can be seen, fewer delays in referrals or finally getting home before midnight (because some people have a life outside the ward).

Time doesn’t always show up on the budget sheet, but it shows up in performance, morale, and experience.

Time Is a Metric Too: Why You Should Track It in Operational Digital Projects

1. Time is often the first measurable benefit in operational digital workstreams:
While infrastructural transformations like cloud migration might deliver quick financial gains through reduced capital expenditure, other operational digital workstreams like robotic process automation, digital dictation, or AI-assisted documentation tend to start by saving time. They might not instantly cut headcount or supplier costs, but they streamline repetitive tasks.

If a tool saves 1 minute per task, and that task happens 1000 times a week, that’s 1000 minutes freed up. Over time, this can translate to less overtime, smoother staff redeployment, and delayed recruitment, all of which are real cost avoidances.

But here’s the thing: you can’t demonstrate any of that unless you start tracking the time savings now.

2. Time savings are how operational digital workstreams prove their worth.
Let’s be honest, not every digital investment will come with immediate or instant hard savings. Unlike cost-cutting projects that close a department or cancel a subscription, many digital improvements usually start with “soft” wins.
Time tracking provides a guardrail metric. A way to quantify early wins while the bigger benefits mature.
It helps the team avoid the “so what?” question later.

3. Time data helps Finance spot future financial levers.
When Finance sees time savings properly tracked, it becomes easier to identify where future financial wins can come from, perhaps in the second phase of your Financial Improvement project.
For instance:
– A team consistently saving 10 hours a week could inform a business case for reducing temporary staffing.
– A process improvement that saves onboarding time? That could boost customer retention or reduce churn.
Without time data, these opportunities stay invisible, and the digital workstream just looks like a “nice to have.”

Final Thoughts: Don’t Underestimate Time

When you ignore time because it doesn’t feel “bankable,” you risk missing out on bigger, longer-term wins. My boss once said, “If you work to improve productivity, cost savings will follow.” And she was right.

Think of operational digital workstreams like planting maize. You don’t roast it the day after you plant it. You wait, nurture it, and monitor its growth through rain and shine. In the same way, digital transformation needs time to mature before the financial fruits show up.

But while you wait, track time. Celebrate it. Respect it.

Because not all savings wear a £ sign.

Until next time,

Tomiwa

Lean Process Improvement Enthusiast

(Still rooting for Time to finally get a seat at the decision-making table.)