Мой личный склад идей

"We're fine, we're so used to it," or how much an inefficient business process costs I have one particular trait — I see inefficient processes or areas where resources could be used more effectively everywhere. But I don’t just see them; thanks to my extensive technical background, I understand exactly how to optimize them. Why do not all people notice these inefficiencies, even in their own work? Because, as I mentioned above, people simply get used to a certain process: they are satisfied with it or find it unprofitable to change something. Most just adapt to circumstances rather than analyze what can be improved. Therefore, when asked: “Why do you do it this way and spend so much time on it?”, the common answer is: “We’re fine, we’re used to it.” Someone simply doesn’t know that it can be done “differently.” And here’s a recent story. A few days ago, I needed to drop off a jacket at the dry cleaner. We arrived, the receptionist examined the jacket, explained everything, and then started filling out a request in their internal system on the computer. And all would be fine, but filling out this request actually took her about 5 minutes. Even though she was just retyping what she had already spoken aloud to us. I looked at this and thought: if only she had some voice interface right now, where she could dictate everything, the system would automatically transcribe it, the LLM would structure it into blocks, and the request form would be filled out automatically by 80–90%. And this would take not 5 minutes, but just one. Then I decided to calculate: how much does this “5-minute” process actually cost? The assumptions are: 5 minutes per process, roughly 10 orders per day. They work without days off, and in Novosibirsk alone, they have 16 locations. So, we get: 5 × 10 × 365 × 16 = 292,000 minutes per year, or approximately 4,867 hours. If we convert this into money and take, for example, an employee salary of 40,000 ₽ + taxes, then the total cost of just this process amounts to about 1,500,000 rubles per year. And this is only direct payroll, not accounting for manual input errors, staff turnover, and burnout. Now, imagine how much the owner of the dry cleaning chain would save if they implemented a voice data entry system and reduced the process from 5 minutes to 1 minute, i.e., by 5 times. Even automation costing 1,000,000 ₽ would pay off in roughly 10 months. The simple conclusion: the most expensive losses almost never look like a problem; they look like a habit. Five minutes here, ten minutes there, “we’ve always done it this way” turn into forever lost time that can’t be recovered.