It took me 3 minutes to produce this graphic using my Sharpies, 1 minute to scan it, 10 minutes to get it to be the right size for this post…. that is ok it is a one off. However I watch in horror as I see clients spending more time correcting data and formatting it for presentation than it took to assemble the data to start with. This would be acceptable if these were one off reports, they need time to digest and look right, but this is less acceptable if the document is produced regularly. Sometimes every hour or so. I am thinking of quotes and invoices being adjusted in Word and Excel. After the data entry and automated error checking – formatting could be a time waster that could be dropped. What would gaining a third of your time back save you? What would adding a further third by automated error checking do? If you watch your staff do this – or worse still are having to do it yourself – it may be time to get a system in place.