Cutting waste by reducing duplication and streamlining processes

Waste rarely looks like waste.

When leaders think about cutting waste, they often picture obvious things: unused software, bloated overheads, expensive suppliers. But in most established small and mid-sized businesses, the biggest waste isn't a single line item.

It's duplication.

It's the same work being done more than once, in different places, for slightly different reasons:

• Two people chasing the same customer update.

• Three versions of the same report with different numbers.

• A ‘proper process’ and then the workaround process everyone actually uses.

• A handover that triggers re-checking, reformatting, and re-entering information.

  
  

Individually, these look like small inefficiencies. Collectively, they create a hidden tax on performance. And that tax often shows up as a familiar feeling: growth has slowed... and everything feels harder than it should.

Why duplication increases as a business matures

Duplication is rarely caused by laziness or incompetence. It's usually created by success.

As a business grows past the early start-up stage:

• teams specialise,

• responsibilities divide,

• more systems are introduced,

• and more people rely on shared information.

  
  

That's healthy. It's what maturing looks like. But specialisation comes with a side effect. Different teams start solving the same problem from their own angle.

• Marketing wants visibility, so they build their own reporting.

• Operations wants certainty, so they add extra checks.

• Finance wants control, so they create a second reconciliation layer.

• Sales wants speed, so they create shortcuts that bypass the official workflow.

  
  

No one sets out to duplicate effort. It emerges naturally as the business tries to cope with complexity.

The most expensive duplication isn't tasks. It's teams pulling in different directions

The cost of duplication isn't just extra time. In many organisations, the biggest waste comes from duplicated ownership, where different teams are responsible for different parts of the same customer journey, under different leadership, measured by different KPIs. That sounds sensible on paper: clear focus, clear accountability.

In practice, it often creates:

• extra management layers

• competing priorities

• decisions optimised for one team's KPI but harmful to the overall P&L

A real example: fixing duplication across acquisition, in-life, and retention

When I took over the consumer P&L in a large telco, there were three separate teams under three separate leadership structures:

• Acquisition

• In-life

• Retention

  
  

The hidden waste showed up in two ways:

1) Direct cost

Three leadership structures meant additional management overhead, additional reporting, additional meetings, and more time spent coordinating rather than executing.

2) The bigger problem: KPI competition

The teams weren't aligned to the same outcome. They were incentivised to win their own scorecard.

So what happened?

• Acquisition reduced price to drive volume to hit their targets.

• That immediately created pressure on Retention, who then had to match pricing to avoid losing customers.

• The result wasn't growth. It was dilution - margin erosion across the base that cost more than the acquisition gains delivered.

  
  

Meanwhile, In-life sat at the bottom of the priority pile. It didn't get traction or channel resource even though improving the value of the existing customer base is often the closest thing businesses have to ‘liquid gold.’

So the company effectively over-invested in acquisition volume, under-invested in base value, and then paid again to protect customers from the price reductions it created.

This is duplication at its most expensive. Not duplicated admin but duplicated decision-making that fights itself.

What changed?

I brought the three teams together under one structure, aligned KPIs, and made the customer lifetime value a shared outcome rather than a set of competing targets.

The impact was significant and importantly, it improved quickly.

Because when duplication is structural and KPI-driven, fixing it removes friction immediately:

• fewer internal battles,

• cleaner decision-making,

• better resource allocation,

• and P&L improvement that doesn't require heroic effort.

What duplication actually costs you (the full picture)

The obvious cost is time. But the real cost is bigger and more damaging.

1) Slower execution

Every duplicated step increases cycle time. Not just because it adds work, but because it adds waiting:

• waiting for confirmation

• waiting for a handoff

• waiting for a correction

• waiting for ‘the right version’

  
  

Slow execution becomes normal, and people stop noticing it.

2) More errors and rework

Duplication often creates multiple sources of truth. The moment that happens, mistakes become inevitable:

• wrong customer details

• wrong pricing

• wrong delivery dates

• wrong reporting

  
  

Errors then trigger more duplication (extra checking, extra approvals, extra manual work), and the cycle continues.

3) Higher management overhead

When leaders can't trust the process or the numbers, meetings become:

• status updates

• reconciliation

• ‘who said what’ clarification

• firefighting

This is why teams feel busy but progress feels slow.

4) Customer impact

Customers experience duplication as friction:

• being asked the same questions twice

• inconsistent information

• delays

• ‘I'll need to check with someone else’

  
  

For businesses that depend on repeat customers and ongoing relationships, this friction quietly damages loyalty and lifetime value.

The common sources of duplication i.e. what to look for

Duplication tends to cluster in a few predictable areas.

1) Reporting and management information

If you have:

• multiple dashboards

• multiple spreadsheets

• multiple teams producing ‘the numbers’

  
  

...then you almost certainly have duplicated effort.

This often stems from a lack of a single agreed ‘truth’ and clear ownership of metrics.

2) Handoffs between teams

Every handoff creates a risk of:

• missing information

• misunderstandings

• re-checking

Common high-duplication handoffs include:

• marketing → sales

• sales → delivery

• delivery → finance

• support → operations

If handovers rely on people ‘knowing what to do’ rather than a clear, minimal process, duplication grows.

3) Manual checks and approvals

Approvals often start as governance. Then they multiply.

The key question is:what risk is this check actually reducing and is it the best way to reduce it? Often the check exists because the upstream input isn't trusted. Fix the upstream input, and the downstream checking disappears.

4) ‘Shadow processes’

This is where the official process exists, but people don't use it because it feels too slow or unreliable.

So they create:

• spreadsheets

• ‘Teams’ threads

• personal trackers

Shadow processes are a form of duplication that hides in plain sight, because people rely on them daily.

5) Tool overlap

Many established businesses have accumulated tools over time:

• a CRM plus ‘the spreadsheet that actually runs the pipeline’

• project management in two places

• multiple communication tools

• overlapping analytics

Tool overlap always creates duplication because people must update and reconcile multiple systems.

How to streamline without creating chaos

Most businesses approach streamlining the wrong way. They try to standardise everything at once.A better approach is to target where duplication creates the most drag.

Step 1: Start with the handful of workflows that drive value

Pick 3-5 core workflows that matter most. Examples:

• enquiry → sale → onboarding

• quote → contract → delivery

• order → fulfilment → invoicing

• issue raised → resolution → follow-up

• renewal / repeat purchase process

  
  

The goal isn't to map the entire organisation. It's to understand where the business creates value and where that value gets slowed down.

Step 2: Identify the duplication hotspots

Ask:

• Where do we ask for the same information twice?

• Where does someone reformat, re-enter, or re-check something?

• Where do we have multiple trackers for the same thing?

• Where does work bounce back and forth between teams?

You're looking for the repeated steps that have become normal.

Step 3: Fix duplication at the incentive level, not just the process level

This is the lesson from the telco example. If teams are measured on KPIs that conflict, they will optimise locally - even if it damages the overall P&L.

So alongside process mapping, ask:

• Do these teams share the same north star metric?

• Are we rewarding volume when margin matters?

• Are we rewarding speed when quality matters?

• Are we rewarding acquisition when we should be rewarding value?

Often the fastest streamlining comes from aligning KPIs and ownership.

Step 4: Clarify ownership. Ideally one owner per process

For each core workflow, assign a single accountable owner who:

• defines what good looks like

• keeps the process minimal

• owns continuous improvement

• makes sure teams actually use it

This prevents duplication from returning through everyone's version of the process.

Step 5: Standardise inputs before you automate

Duplication often exists because inputs are unclear:

• what counts as a qualified enquiry?

• what information must be captured at onboarding?

• what triggers an escalation?

When inputs are unclear, each team creates its own interpretation. That creates duplicate checking and rework downstream. Make inputs explicit and consistent. The process gets smoother automatically.

Step 6: Remove steps that don't change an outcome

Streamlining is mostly subtraction.

If a step doesn't:

• reduce risk in a measurable way

• improve the customer experience

• or help a decision get made

...it's a candidate to remove.

A simple test:If we stopped doing this for two weeks, what would break? If the answer is ‘nothing important,’ it's likely waste.

Step 7: Automate last, not first

Automation works best when it amplifies a process that is already clear and minimal. If you automate a messy workflow, you simply make the mess faster. Streamline first. Then automate stable steps.

What ‘good’ looks like after streamlining

When duplication reduces, you typically see:

• faster cycle times

• fewer errors and escalations

• fewer internal alignment meetings

• more capacity without hiring

• smoother customer experience

Most importantly, leaders feel that performance becomes easier again because the business is no longer fighting itself.