Vlad, we need to hire people.
How we found 19 million RUB by simply refusing to inflate the headcount

Usually, a business owner comes to a tracker with a request for growth. But in this case, growth had already happened, and now there was another problem: A flood of leads, managers are overwhelmed. We urgently need to hire people to handle the volume.

The owner saw the solution in hiring more hands. I decided to first find the cause and dig into what was happening.

Stage 1. Digitization: facts vs. feelings. The first rule: stop believing words (“we’re tired”) and look at the numbers. We needed to understand: where exactly is time being lost?

We implemented a “workday photograph.” For three consecutive days — Wednesday, Thursday, Friday — we recorded every 15 minutes what the precious salespeople were doing.

What the measurements showed:
Instead of selling, managers spent 62% of their time working as secretaries. They manually entered invoices into 1C. Ran around offices to sign contracts. Fixed typos. The company paid them like “stars” but used them like couriers.

Stage 2. The million-dollar hypothesis
We sat down with the owner and calculated: “If we automate the routine (integrate EDI + CRM), we DON’T need new people. The current team can do 1.5 times more.”

Stage 3. Tracking implementation
It’s not enough to come up with an idea — you have to implement it. Usually, everything stalls at this stage: contractors drag their feet, employees rebel (“it was better before”), the owner gets distracted.

We held a tender. I made sure that contractors didn’t just “install software” but solved the business problem — reducing routine and freeing up time.

Sprint rhythm: We moved in one-week bursts. Every Thursday — a clear check-in. What’s ready? Who’s slowing down? What do we do next?

Taming sabotage: When the team started resisting (and that’s inevitable), I brought everyone back to the numbers. We didn’t argue “like/don’t like,” we looked at “faster/slower.”

Stage 4. Result (Point B) Six months later, we calculated the effect on the annual volume (2400 orders).

Look at the magic of numbers: 📉 Processes: We removed 22,160 hours of manual work from the system. 👥 People: This is equivalent to the work of 11 full-time employees.

We got an entire department of 11 people for free, just by cleaning out the “trash” from the processes.

💰 Money: Converting hours into payroll (salary + taxes + office) = 19,944,000 rubles in savings per year.

🚀 Growth: 25% of the freed-up time was directed toward calls and sales. The same people started bringing in more money.

Main takeaway: The job of a tracker is not to give advice. It’s to manage change when everyone is scared and it’s difficult (even if it’s the tracker himself 😁😁😁) and to push implementation through to the end without letting the process fizzle out.

Time tracking spreadsheet