How to Use Technology to Reduce Time Leakage

Progress Software recently conducted a survey and published the results of it in a report called “The Hidden Cost of Client Engagement.” The survey revealed that 84.5% of professional services firms believe their coordination methods to be satisfactory.

What’s interesting, however, is that client-facing staff spend an average of 20.3 hours every week on coordination tasks that can’t be billed. Where exactly does that time go? Toward tasks like:

• Tracking down missing information
• Fixing incorrect submissions
• Following up on outstanding items
• Wrangling files and signatures from disparate systems

Is this type of time leakage just the cost of doing business?

It doesn’t have to be.

In this post, we’re going to break down what exactly time leakage is and what it costs professional services firms that accept it as the norm. Then we’ll look at some ways in which the right technological solution can help repair those leaks.

What Is Time Leakage?

Time leakage refers to billable work that doesn’t get billed to your clients. It can also refer to mismanaged time that can’t get turned into revenue.

Time leaks might seem small. But they never happen just once. They tend to become part of the way your team works—due to inefficient processes, disconnected systems or poor time tracking and management skills.

If you want to visualize this concept, imagine a pipe is leaking. There may just be one droplet falling at a time. However, those leaking droplets can lead to a real mess over time.

That’s how time leakage works. Bits of time leak here and there, often in the background and without making much noise. Eventually, though, all those low-value tasks being mismanaged or done inefficiently are going to go from being a minute or two to hours of wasted time and effort.

How Company Growth Worsens Time Leakage

Now let’s bring this analogy back to the professional services world.

Let’s say you’re leaking maybe an hour or two a week among your team. It doesn’t seem that big of a deal. However, your company has recently begun to ramp up hiring to prepare for the big move into a new vertical.

What do you think will happen to those time leaks when your company grows two or three times its current size? More team members, more clients and more opportunities to leak away minutes until they become hours you’ve lost every week.

Here’s what the survey found when professional services firms experience time leaks at scale:

• 5.99 hours go toward following up on missing documents
• 5.10 hours are spent fixing incorrect or incomplete submissions
• 4.71 hours go toward tracking requests and statuses manually
• 4.52 hours are devoted to managing signatures and file-related tasks

This is time spent every week on client coordination overhead tasks. Over the course of a year, this time ends up costing firms a median of $60,840.

That’s just the median value. For almost one in three firms, the costs exceed $120,000 every year.

Revenue loss isn’t the only potential result of time leakage. Delayed projects, missed deadlines and burned-out employees can arise as well.

Tips for Using Technology to Prevent Time Leakage

Whether time leakage is a big issue for you or something you want to prevent, here are four tips to help you close up those leaks as they pertain to client coordination:

1. Consolidate Client Coordination into One System

Before you do anything else, have a look at the solutions you’re using to manage your client coordination tasks. If you have more than one, then your goal in the coming year should be to consolidate them down to a single solution.

Disparate client coordination systems are likely causing time leaks. Every time an employee has to copy info or manually carry a file over from one system to another, a time leak has occurred. Sure, that time is getting tracked and invoiced, but the unnecessary or redundant effort is eating away at your profit margins.

If you run a professional services firm, consider migrating to Progress ShareFile software if it’s not already part of your workflow.

From this single platform, you can centralize and streamline the vast majority (if not all) of your client coordination efforts. And once the system is in place, it will scale as your firm does.

2. Create Structured Info Requests

Professional services firms spend more than five hours a week, on average, fixing incorrect or incomplete client submissions. One of the reasons this may be happening is that your clients lack structure.

For example, let’s say you’re an accountant. You ask your client for their last quarter’s worth of receipts for business expenses. That’s it. It’s an open-ended request. So they start forwarding you emails that contain receipts as attachments or within the message itself. They also take photos of hard-copy receipts and text them to you. They might even forward you their business credit card statements.

That’s a ton of data to sift through. Not only do you need to verify you got everything you need, you’re going to have to do a bunch of data entry to get all that data into one place. And over the course of doing so, you may realize some details are missing.

There are two examples of time leaks here. First, having to manually manage all of that data on your own. Second, having to deal with the follow-up if you discover that data is missing.

To prevent this issue, your clients need structure. With the ShareFile platform, for instance, you can create structured forms that help reinforce consistent and complete info submissions.

In this example, we’ve built an Expense Receipts form template. Every field is required, and the form covers all your bases, from basic details about the expense to a place where your clients can upload the receipt (in case you want to confirm the submission).

By creating custom forms like this one, you’ll not only save yourself the trouble of having to locate missing info or correct (as many) errors, but if you turn them into reusable templates, you’ll also prevent time leakage that happens when making the same requests of other clients.

3. Keep Clients Accountable with Request Lists

If you’re using the ShareFile platform, take advantage of the other templates available. The request list template, in particular, will come in handy if you ask clients for the same info and files from job to job.

Let’s say you’re a divorce attorney. When dealing with clients who want spousal support, there are certain pieces of information and files you need in order to put together an estimate. Your request list might include:

• Their W-2s (if any)
• Their spouse’s W-2s and other earnings statements
• Credit card and bank statements to demonstrate typical expenses
• Receipts of regular bills paid to maintain the household
• Other files that support the need for alimony

Similar to information collection, it can be risky to leave this kind of request open-ended with clients. If there is something specific you need, give them a request list and a space for each individual file.

Also, if there is a file you need them to fill out, you should upload that file to the system and send it to them. That way, they can’t make excuses about not being able to find the file on their own, nor will you have to make them repeat the process if they fill out the wrong version.

Here is an example Proof of Spousal Support request list we created in the ShareFile template builder:

With this system in place, the onus to submit all the required materials will be on your clients. Once a request is assigned to them, it will show up on their task list, and they will receive reminders when it reaches overdue territory.

4. Track All Client Requests at a Glance

While inefficient processes and poor time management from within can create time leakage, so can clients who fail to deliver on their end. Providing them with structured forms and request lists will help.

That said, just because someone receives a task or reminder about it, that doesn’t mean they’re going to fulfill it. But by keeping all these tasks in your client management system, you’ll now have a better means of keeping tabs on them.

The trick to making this easier on yourself is to create a very clear and well-detailed request for your client. For instance, in the tip above, you can see that there are fields for “Due date” and “Assigned to.” These all need to be filled in in order to have full oversight.

When you’ve done that, you’ll be able to use the ShareFile Tasks feature to keep tabs on where things are in your pipeline. There’s an area for Request lists as well as Forms here:

Instead of having to ask colleagues where things stand or sift through all your client folders to find out what’s going on, you’ll come here. From the Tasks view, you’ll be able to see the status of all your forms and task lists.

The example above gives you an idea of how this view looks once you start assigning things to your clients. And as items get completed, the Status and Progress columns will update.

If your team is throwing away minutes at a time tracking down project statuses and outstanding items, this tool will allow them to more effectively oversee and manage everything.

Wrapping Up

If your time leaks seem manageable now, that’s not an excuse to ignore them. Because if your firm is looking to grow in the near future, the leakage is going to grow right alongside it.

With a consolidated system for client coordination and tools that close up your time leaks, your professional services firm will be able to improve efficiency and capture more revenue in the years to come.

Learn more about how the ShareFile platform is designed to help you collaborate with clients.