From Ten Working Days to Two: Automating Quarterly Reporting
By Matthew Andrews ·
Across 12 large-scale applications, quarterly reporting required an intensive effort from approximately 20 people. Teams spent most or all of ten working days producing reports, duplicating information, organizing and binding materials, and preparing summaries for inspection and approval through the chain of command.
The reports mattered. The question was whether assembling them needed to consume so much of the team’s time.
Finding the Repeated Work
I identified an opportunity to produce the reports directly from the reporting source.
The existing process required people to repeatedly prepare and organize information that was already available. My approach was to automate that preparation, leaving people responsible for reviewing the output and making the adjustments needed before submission.
Building Around the Source
I created an automation system that generated the reports directly from the source information. The resulting reports needed a few adjustments, but substantially less manual preparation.
The system supported the existing inspection and approval process. It reduced the work required to prepare material for that process.
The Result
Quarterly preparation fell from approximately ten working days to two, an 80% reduction in turnaround time.
To estimate the value of the capacity freed, I used:
- Approximately 20 people across the 12 applications.
- Four reporting cycles per year.
- Eight fewer preparation days per person, per cycle.
- An eight-hour workday.
- An average annual salary of $110,000, divided by 2,080 working hours.
Under those assumptions, the reduction represents approximately 5,120 staff hours per year, equivalent to $270,769 in annual salary cost.
I describe this as approximately $270,000 in annual salary-equivalent capacity freed. It is an estimate of staff time made available for other work, not a claim that payroll spending decreased by that amount. The calculation excludes benefits and overhead and assumes full-day participation during the preparation periods.
What I Took From It
The opportunity became clear when I examined how much effort went into preparing information that already existed.
That experience shaped how I approach automation: identify the source, trace the repeated preparation steps, and determine which parts can be generated consistently while preserving the review that people need to perform.
In this case, the practical outcome was straightforward. A recurring reporting requirement that occupied a team for roughly two working weeks could be prepared in two days.