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Valoris — Automation & SoftwareRomână

Stage two

The digital audit.

Two weeks of work inside the company, on four pillars. The deliverable is a report: the hours each process consumes monthly, the application inventory, the process maps, the digital rating from 1 to 10, and the list of automations ordered by score.

Discuss the audit

The method

Public instruments, not a house method.

We have not invented a framework of our own. We use four recognised instruments, each with its public documentation: DMAT, the digital maturity assessment tool used by the European Commission through the European Digital Innovation Hubs network; application portfolio rationalisation; process mapping through SIPOC, swimlane diagrams and value stream mapping; and a scoring grid on six criteria for automation candidates.

The reason is simple. A report built on a house framework cannot be checked by anyone outside. One built on public instruments can: you can take the report, hand it to someone else, and they will know exactly what they are reading.

Measured durations are taken by the clock, on real cases, not from the memory of whoever performs the work. Between the two there is usually a factor of two, and always in the same direction.

The four pillars

What is done, in order.

The order does not change. Each pillar needs the result of the one before it, and scoring does not begin until the map has been validated.

Digital maturity

Assessment on DMAT, the European Commission's instrument. It places the company against a benchmark from outside it, not against our opinion.

What is assessed

  • Digital strategy, and how investment in tools is decided.
  • Digital readiness: what systems exist and how much of the company actually uses them.
  • Human-centric digitalisation: skills, training, resistance to change.
  • Data governance: who owns the data, where it sits, who has access.
  • Automation and artificial intelligence: what already runs without intervention.
  • Green digitalisation, reported as such, even though it rarely changes the recommendation.

What comes out

  • The DMAT score on each dimension, with the answers it follows from.
  • The digital rating from 1 to 10, derived from it.
  • Comparison with companies of similar size, where the benchmark allows it.

The application inventory

Application portfolio rationalisation: what software exists, what it does, what it costs, and how many of them do the same thing.

What is inventoried

  • Every application in use, including those departments pay for without management knowing.
  • The function of each, its active users and its annual cost.
  • The overlaps: two or three tools covering the same need.
  • The interfaces each exposes, and the connections already in place.
  • Data kept in spreadsheets because no system can hold it.
  • What can be taken out of each system, and in what form.

What comes out

  • The complete inventory, with annual cost per application and degree of use.
  • The list of overlaps and of licences paid for with no users.
  • The map of connections possible with what you already have, without replacing tools.

The process maps

SIPOC for the boundaries of each process, swimlane diagrams for handovers, value stream mapping for timings.

What is mapped

  • The boundaries of each process: who starts it, what goes in, what comes out, who receives it.
  • The handovers between people and between departments, one by one.
  • Worked time and idle time, separated, at each step.
  • The points where the same data is entered a second time — the re-entry counter.
  • Exceptions: how often they arise, who resolves them, how long they take.
  • The difference between the process in the procedure and the process at the desk.

What comes out

  • The map of each flow, with cycle time and the ratio of worked to idle.
  • The re-entry counter: how many times the same information is entered, and where.
  • The hours per month consumed by each step: frequency multiplied by measured duration.

Candidate scoring

Every automation candidate is scored on six criteria. The score sets the order of the list — not our preference, and not yours.

The six criteria

  • Volume: how many times a month it is performed.
  • Duration: the hours consumed monthly, from the measurement.
  • Clarity of the rule: how exactly what must be done can be described.
  • Exception rate: how often the case falls outside the rule.
  • Access to data: whether an interface exists, or the information must be scraped off a screen.
  • Cost of error: what happens when the step is performed wrongly.

What comes out

  • The list of candidates, each with its score on the six criteria.
  • The monthly hours released and the effort to build, for each.
  • The order of execution, given by the ratio between them, and the threshold below which we recommend nothing.

Rules of engagement

What we bind ourselves to.

The rules below are not there to persuade. They are the ones that cost us something, which is precisely why they are worth writing down.

  • We do not score on an unvalidated map

    The process map is confirmed by two people from the company before scoring begins. If it is not confirmed by day eight, we extend the audit at no cost. A report raised on a wrong map is wrong throughout.

  • The fee is not deducted from implementation

    It remains a separate mandate, paid in full, whatever follows. If it were deducted, the recommendation in the report would depend on what we sell after it. This way it does not.

  • We sell no licences and take no commission from suppliers

    We hold no reseller agreement with any software vendor and receive no percentage when we recommend a tool. If the recommendation is to buy nothing, that is the recommendation.

  • The report is yours

    Data, maps and scores included. You may hand it to someone else to execute. We ask for no exclusivity and lock nothing into formats only we can read.

  • We decline the mandate when it has no object

    We do not take on the audit if the hours to be recovered do not cover the fee, if the company asks for an implementation quote in the first conversation, or if the problem is one of management rather than of process. Automation does not repair a decision nobody has taken.

The rating

The digital rating, from 1 to 10.

The rating is derived from the DMAT score and from the ratio between the hours that run without human intervention and the total hours consumed by repeating work. It is not an opinion and it is not negotiated.

A company at 4 is not a weak company. It is a company in which more than half of the repeating work passes through a pair of hands that add nothing to it. The rating says that, and says how much.

1 · Manual10 · Autonomous
  • 1 – 2Manual. Information travels on paper, by telephone and in people's memory. When a person leaves, the process leaves with them.
  • 3 – 4Fragmented. Tools exist, but they pass nothing to one another. The same data is entered two or three times.
  • 5 – 6Ordered. Processes are written down and broadly followed. Connections between systems exist, but they are partial and break at the first exception.
  • 7 – 8Integrated. Systems pass their data on their own. People handle exceptions and decisions.
  • 9 – 10Autonomous. What repeats runs without intervention. People handle only what is new.

What you receive

The anatomy of the report.

A written document, delivered and discussed in a meeting with you. Every line has a figure against it and a source behind it.

  • The DMAT score by dimension and the digital rating from 1 to 10.
  • The application inventory, with annual cost, active users and overlaps.
  • The map of each flow, with cycle time and idle time separated.
  • The re-entry counter: where the same information is entered, and how many times.
  • The hours per month consumed by each repeating operation.
  • The list of automation candidates, with their scores on the six criteria.
  • The monthly hours released and the effort to build, for each candidate.
  • The order of execution, with the reasoning for that order.
  • What we do not recommend automating, and the threshold below which it is not worth it.

The fee

A fee known in advance.

The digital audit
What it coversFee
The complete audit
The four pillars, roughly two weeks of work inside the company, the written report and the delivery meeting.		from €5,000 plus VAT
  • The fee starts at €5,000 and rises with the size of the company and the number of processes the audit covers. It is settled at the initial consultation, before work begins, and does not depend on what the audit finds.
  • It is not deducted from implementation. It is a separate mandate, precisely so that the recommendation does not depend on what follows.
  • If the initial consultation shows that the hours to be recovered do not cover the fee, we do not propose the audit.

Before the audit

The audit follows the consultation.

The first conversation takes an hour, costs nothing, and ends with an order of magnitude for the hours being lost. The audit is proposed only if that figure justifies it.

About the consultationWrite to us