The audit: we learn how the work actually moves
3 weeks on site with the revenue team. Process owners get shadowed rather than surveyed, because the shadow spreadsheet and the approval that happens in a hallway never come up on a call.
A process and time map, a controls register, the exception taxonomy in your team's own wording, a volume baseline pulled from the systems rather than estimated, and a build plan signed by the people who run the work. $15–25k, credited in full against a build signed within 90 days.
16 sessions with 13 people. Every session transcribed and tagged against the workflow it describes.
| Role | Sessions | Minutes each | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account executives | 5 | 60 | Where a deal waits, and what they rebuild by hand each week |
| Sales operations | 3 | 90 | Routing rules, field hygiene, reporting assembly |
| Deal desk | 3 | 60 | Pricing policy, approval thresholds, precedent handling |
| Legal and contracting | 2 | 60 | Playbook clauses and what genuinely needs a lawyer |
| CRO and VP Sales | 3 | 45 | Forecast cadence, segment strategy, what gets escalated |
34 sources ingested, indexed and made queryable. The working spreadsheets matter most, because they are where the real process lives when the SOP has drifted.
10 systems mapped, including the ones nobody lists on an architecture diagram.
- Salesforce · CRM
- HubSpot · Marketing automation
- Gong · Conversation
- DocuSign CLM · Contracting
- Clari · Forecast
- NetSuite · ERP
- Outlook · Correspondence
- Slack · Coordination
- Excel · Working files
- Snowflake · Reporting
In-scope process work, not total department labour
| Driver | Volume | Hours/yr |
|---|---|---|
| Quote preparation and turnaround | 5,400 quotes at 35 min | 3,150 |
| CRM data entry and hygiene | 22 reps × 4.5 hrs/week × 46 weeks | 4,554 |
| Deal desk and approvals | 1,150 deals at 55 min | 1,054 |
| Contract turnaround | 620 contracts at 2.4 hrs | 1,488 |
| Forecast roll-up | 12 cycles × 4 people × 14 hrs | 672 |
| Lead routing and first touch | 9,800 leads at 6 min | 980 |
| Total in scope | 11,900 |
- Carried by agents7,616 hrs64%
- Stays with people4,284 hrs36%
4,284 hours a year remain manual, and should: judgement calls, genuine exceptions, and the relationships that need a person on the other end. The two shares are complements of one another, so they sum to 100 by construction.
Deal desk and approvals
Quote turnaround is the constraint reps complain about and the one buyers feel.
CRM hygiene and capture
Highest automatable share of the five. Reps stop maintaining records they never wanted to maintain.
Lead routing and speed to lead
Nineteen hours to first touch is where most of the conversion loss sits.
Contract acceleration
Redline triage against the playbook, with anything outside policy going to a person.
Forecast roll-up
Lowest automatable share because the judgement in a forecast call is the point.
The five sum to $1.12M, the same modelled annual value shown in chapter 01. Bars are each workflow's value against the largest of the five.
- Audit · 3 weeks
- P1 Deal desk and approvals
- P2 CRM hygiene and capture
- P3 Lead routing and speed to lead
- P4 Contract acceleration
- P5 Forecast roll-up
- Operate · ongoing
Audit 3 weeks, build 10–12 weeks, then continuous operation. Workflows overlap because the connector work for one is usually most of the connector work for the next.
Session counts, document counts and hours are modelled against the basis company, not recorded from an engagement. The method is real; the volumes are what a 38-person revenue function at that size would produce.