Budgeting for 2027: What will another year of business as usual cost?

When preparing a budget for 2027, the investment in digitalisation quickly gets a price tag. A quote arrives, licence costs are added up, and implementation costs and the time required from the internal team are estimated. Then comes the question: can this expense wait another year?

The cost of the current way of working is harder to see in one place. It is spread across the hours employees spend looking for documents, re-entering data, gathering approvals and checking why something has stalled. Some of it shows up in overtime and corrections. Some shows up in work the team no longer has the capacity to handle.

We will not make an elephant out of a mouse. But we will calculate how much our budget will eat in a year.

By postponing digitalisation, a company continues to fund its current way of working. An investment decision should therefore include an estimate of what that way of working will cost over the coming year, particularly if the company plans to serve more customers, handle more orders or open additional locations.

This question is equally relevant to companies that already have an ERP, electronic invoices and a digital archive. A considerable amount of manual coordination can still remain between these systems. It is worth examining that part of the operation before the budget is finalised.

The cost that comes with every document

An employee enters the details from an invoice, a colleague checks them, and accounting enters them again in a different system. If an attachment is missing, the document goes back through some of the same steps. Meanwhile, someone responds to the supplier and tries to find out when processing will be complete.

Taken individually, these activities look like a normal part of the working day. Their cost becomes clearer when considered alongside the annual volume of documents and the number of people involved in processing them.

We explored this in our article on the hidden costs of manually processing incoming invoices. Tracking down the people responsible, passing on documentation and correcting errors all take time. That time is part of the process, even if it is harder to identify in a single budget line.

Growth plans need to account for capacity

More customers and orders also mean more confirmations, contracts, invoices and internal approvals. If the way they are processed stays the same, additional volume may mean more staff, overtime or longer waiting times.

That is why a growth plan should also consider how much additional administrative work it creates. For a company opening new locations or expanding sales, the cost of processing each additional order matters, as does the existing team’s ability to complete it on time.

This was the challenge AutoParts24 faced before automating its order and delivery processes. The business had outgrown workflows based on Excel spreadsheets, phone calls and emails. OWIS connected order receipt, supplier confirmations, shipment creation and tracking, and complaints handling.

The value of this change lies in the capacity to handle more work with less additional manual effort.

Internal delays can push back revenue

Sales has agreed a deal, but the contract is still waiting for internal review. A customer has confirmed an order, but the documentation is not ready for the next step. Teams exchange more messages, check versions and chase approvals.

For a company where completing these steps triggers delivery or the start of a service, administrative delays can postpone fulfilment and, depending on the agreed terms, invoicing as well. In these situations, the cost of a slow process extends beyond administration.

In the contract management project for EKI, the review and approval workflow, participants and access rights were defined, and a central register was established. The implementation shortened the time needed to create and approve contracts and provided a clearer view of their status.

Which internal steps are currently delaying the completion of work your company has already agreed to deliver? The answer shows where improving a process could have an impact beyond administration.

Manual work between systems has a cost

A company can have a capable ERP and well-maintained financial records while still relying on manual work to link document receipt, approval and posting. Employees move data from one system to another, check whether it has been accepted and reconcile statuses.

That work remains a recurring cost even after the individual systems have been paid for. Reducing it can increase the value of existing investments and free up the time of the people currently keeping those tools connected.

OWIS Automation Flow connects workflows with ERP systems. In the process described, approved invoice data is sent to the ERP, while confirmation that the invoice has been posted is returned to OWIS and becomes part of the record for that invoice.

Poor visibility costs managers time

Preparing an overview of outstanding work can begin with a string of messages to colleagues. Finance checks who has the invoice, sales asks how far the contract has progressed, and a manager tries to piece together the full picture before a meeting.

Each of these checks involves several people and interrupts other tasks. For management, that means less time available for making decisions, working with clients and developing the business.

Customised OWIS workspaces and widgets can bring pending cases, tasks and information relevant to a particular team together in one place. This makes it easier to identify delays and set priorities.

An assessment of the value of digitalisation should therefore include the time it takes to obtain the information needed to manage the business. When that overview is readily available, some routine status chasing can be replaced with timely action.

An error creates another round of work

An incorrect piece of data or a duplicate invoice may require checking documents, contacting the supplier, correcting records and obtaining approval again. The cost increases with each additional person and step needed to resolve the issue.

A digital process allows some checks to be built into the way work is carried out. At KappaStar Group, the OWIS implementation introduced duplicate invoice checks, data exchange with NAV and reports showing processing times by stage.

You can estimate the cost of corrections using their frequency and the active staff time needed to resolve them. This shows how much work goes into dealing with errors and where preventing them would make the most sense.

Keeping work moving when someone is away

Annual leave, a business trip or an unexpected absence can reveal how much a process depends on one person’s availability. The documentation is ready, but the next step is on hold because no colleague has been clearly designated to provide cover, or that colleague does not have the necessary access rights.

Through temporary delegation of authority in business processes, OWIS allows a colleague to be appointed to provide cover for a defined period, subject to the appropriate access restrictions. For an unplanned absence, an administrator can set up the delegation.

Identifying someone with the necessary knowledge in advance, and defining their authority and period of cover, gives the organisation a clearer way to keep work moving. This reduces the need to improvise and make individual arrangements every time someone is unavailable.

Putting a number on the cost of your current processes

Consider an illustrative example: 20 employees each spend 15 minutes every working day re-entering data, looking for documents and performing manual checks. Assuming 220 working days, that adds up to 1,100 hours a year. This calculation covers active employee time. The time a document spends waiting between steps is tracked separately.

If, for the same calculation, we assume a total labour cost of BAM 20 per hour, the annual cost of that time is BAM 22,000. This is the estimated labour cost of those activities. Process analysis should establish how much of that work can be reduced.

The time freed up can be used to handle a larger workload, reduce overtime or lower the need for additional capacity. Cash savings arise when expenditure actually falls or a future cost that would otherwise have been necessary is avoided.

On the investment side of the calculation, include licences, implementation, integrations, training and the time required from your own team. Timing also matters: benefits begin once the process has been implemented and people start using it. We explored the elements of this assessment in more detail in How can we tell if digitalization is truly worth the investment?.

What to include in your 2027 budget

A useful starting point is one process with a clear problem. Establish the volume of work, where repetition and delays occur, the expected growth and the outcome the company wants to achieve. This provides a basis for defining the scope of the investment and how its impact will be measured.

If the project is postponed by another year, the point at which it can start delivering value also moves back. In the meantime, the current way of working continues to consume time and resources as the company handles its planned business volume.

That is why a budget discussion should place another question alongside the price of digitalisation: what will it cost us to keep working the same way in 2027?

The OWIS team can help you review a chosen process, identify opportunities for improvement and define what the investment should deliver for your company. Get in touch so we can explore where it makes the most sense to start.