ROI Case File No.486 'Why Thirteen IT Staff Can't Speak Strategy'
Why Thirteen IT Staff Can't Speak Strategy
Chapter One: Thirteen People, None Available for Strategy
"We have 13 staff. But the time available for strategic work is nearly zero."
Tomohiko Nakamura, IT Systems Director at TechnoSolve, spread the department's work breakdown on the desk. A pie chart—routine inquiry response 35%, PC setup and equipment prep 20%, master data entry 15%, daily maintenance 15%, incident response 10%. The remaining 5% was marked "improvement and strategy."
"Executives are asking for AI adoption proposals," Nakamura continued. "But we don't have examination time internally. Trapped in daily work, no room for thinking strategy forms. The department that could leverage AI doesn't have time to examine AI."
"What's the content of routine inquiries?" Claude confirmed.
"The top three account for 60% of the total," Nakamura answered. "First, 'I forgot my password.' Second, 'I don't know how to enter this.' Third, 'This system is acting strange.' All of them, same type of content, answered repeatedly by 13 people in rotation."
"How often are PC setup and equipment prep?" Gemini asked.
"Average of 25 PC setups per month for new hires and transfers," Nakamura answered. "Plus, every meeting requires tablet and PC prep and recovery. For large meetings, 10 units the day before, 5 on the morning—two hours for setup and operation checks. Same for recovery and initialization afterward—one hour."
"Where is the data?" I confirmed.
"Scattered," Nakamura answered. "Excel, Access, internal server folders, cloud storage—successive owners each created their own place. When executives request data analysis, we start by searching for where what exists."
"When's the deadline for the AI adoption proposal?" Claude asked.
"Three months out," Nakamura answered. "If we can't produce a concrete proposal by then, an external vendor takes over the conversation. The vendor isn't the problem, but IT loses ownership. That's bad long-term."
"When IT can't speak strategy, strategy comes from outside," I said quietly.
Chapter Two: The Four Verbs ECRS Demands
"This case needs ECRS."
Claude wrote four letters on the whiteboard. E, C, R, S.
"ECRS is a framework for reviewing work through four verbs—Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, Simplify," I explained. "A classic of process improvement, but especially effective for IT departments—'busy but hard to explain what they do.' The order matters: eliminate first, then combine, rearrange, simplify last. Reverse the order and you end up simplifying unnecessary work that was kept."
"Let's measure current cost first," Gemini said, opening ROI Polygraph. Nakamura's operational logs went in.
"Monthly IT work cost is out," Gemini read. "Routine inquiry response across 13 staff averages 600 hours monthly. At ¥3,000/hour, ¥1.8 million monthly. PC setup and equipment prep: 140 hours at ¥420,000. Master data entry: 100 hours at ¥300,000. Data search labor: 80 hours at ¥240,000. Total: ¥2.76 million monthly used on non-strategic work. Annualized: ¥33.12 million. Adding opportunity loss from inability to perform strategic work—delayed response to executive requests—at ¥600,000 monthly, annualized to ¥40.32 million."
Nakamura stared at the numbers. "The amount we can't leverage from 13 people's personnel cost became visible."
"So, let's design with ECRS," I continued.
[E—Eliminate: What Work Can Be Stopped]
"First, identify work that can be eliminated," Claude said. "The top three routine inquiries—forgotten passwords, input questions, behavior confirmation—can all be replaced by AI chatbot. No human needs to answer. Build a mechanism for the chatbot to answer, and 60% of inquiry response leaves staff hands."
"Completely leaves?" Nakamura confirmed.
"Completely," Claude answered. "However, design a flow that routes only inquiries the chatbot can't resolve to a staffed line. Humans concentrate only on questions the chatbot can't answer. That's the design combining elimination with combination."
[C—Combine: What Work Can Be Merged]
"Combine PC setup and equipment prep into one flow," Gemini continued. "New-hire PC kitting, transfer account switching, meeting equipment prep—each is currently owned separately. Reorganize from master registration through equipment delivery into a single automated flow."
"We tried kitting automation before and gave up," Nakamura said.
"Why did you give up?" I asked.
"Too many config items—no single tool could cover them," Nakamura answered.
"Now you can build configurations linking multiple tools via API," Claude supplemented. "Don't stick to one tool; combine multiple into one flow. That's the combine idea."
[R—Rearrange: What Layout Should Change]
"Aggregate scattered data into accessible places," Gemini continued. "Rather than moving all data to one place, create a state where it's accessible by use. Data that executives often reference goes on always-visible dashboards. System states for IT to check aggregate on a monitoring dashboard. Rearrange not the physical data location but the logical access path."
[S—Simplify: What Work Should Be Simplified]
"Review the remaining work at the procedure level," Claude continued. "For example, incident response—currently three steps: receive inquiry, assign owner, owner records after handling. Change this to chatbot handling first reception and automatic record-keeping. Human procedure becomes only 'handling.'"
"Let's simulate with ROI Proposal Generator," Gemini suggested.
- Initial cost: AI chatbot construction, PC kitting automation, data aggregation dashboard, master registration automation totaling ¥8.5 million
- Monthly cost: Tool maintenance and cloud usage ¥220,000/month
- Monthly savings: Routine inquiry reduction ¥1.08 million (60% automation), PC kitting reduction ¥250,000, master registration reduction ¥180,000, data search reduction ¥200,000, strategic work opportunity capture ¥600,000, totaling ¥2.31 million
- Net monthly savings: ¥2.31M − ¥220,000 = ¥2.09M
- Payback period: ¥8.5M ÷ ¥2.09M ≈ 4.1 months
"Payback within 4 months," Gemini summarized. "The biggest effect is creating time usable for strategic work. What to use the liberated time for becomes the core of the proposal to executives at the next meeting."
Nakamura reviewed the figures. "Rather than the reduction amount, what matters today is what we do with the time after it opens up."
"The story of using ECRS-generated time for strategic work is the core of the executive proposal," I responded.
Chapter Three: How to Use the Time You've Reduced
"Let me organize the approach," I said at the whiteboard.
"Month one—identify the top 20 routine inquiries and initial chatbot training. In parallel, define requirements for PC kitting automation. Month two—chatbot pilot operation and kitting automation build begins. Month three—data aggregation dashboard design, master registration automation verification. Month four—full operation and effect measurement. Month five onward—organizational design for allocating reduced time to strategic work."
"Do we need to decide how to use the reduced time in advance?" Nakamura confirmed.
"Without deciding, it gets absorbed into other work and disappears," Claude answered. "As a rule of operational improvement, open time gets filled with other work. Write the use of freed time into the plan document in advance. For example, 'use 30 hours monthly for AI adoption examination' or 'use 20 hours monthly for system renewal planning'—writing specifically protects strategic work."
Nakamura closed his notebook. "Reducing work and deciding how to use the reduction are different tasks, I now recognize."
Chapter Four: The Day Strategy Was Born in IT
Seven months later, a report from Nakamura arrived.
Two months after AI chatbot launch, monthly inquiries to IT dropped 64%. Password-related inquiries particularly dropped 91%, with staff handling under two per day on average. "Getting 'I forgot my password' calls has nearly vanished," Nakamura wrote.
PC kitting automation shortened new-hire PC prep from three hours per unit to 40 minutes. April's 18 new hires were handled in a day and a half instead of the traditional five days.
The data aggregation dashboard formed a habit of executives viewing it themselves, and "find me the data" requests at monthly reports vanished. "Executives now look at data themselves and ask departments questions," the report said.
The biggest change was the use of the freed time. Nakamura's department secured 40 hours monthly as a "strategic work slot" and compiled an internal AI adoption proposal. Submitted to executives, the proposal was approved as a company-wide AI adoption project with IT leading. "We avoided external-vendor-led," Nakamura wrote.
In the staff survey, 11 of 13 responded that "work became interesting." Nine said "returned to what I actually wanted to do." One wrote, Nakamura noted—"Feel like I went from miscellaneous-task handler back to engineer."
A routine-response department became a strategy-proposal department.
"Busy departments have no time to speak strategy. Departments that don't speak strategy get strategy from outside. ECRS's four verbs—eliminate, combine, rearrange, simplify—are tools for decomposing the inside of busyness. The order matters: eliminate first, simplify last. Simplifying what should be kept is the conversation after elimination. Without deciding in advance how to use the freed time, time gets absorbed into other work and disappears. The reason IT can't speak strategy isn't lack of time. It's that how to use the time hasn't been decided in advance."
Related Files
Tools Used
- ROI Polygraph — Visualizing IT work cost and strategic work opportunity loss
- ROI Proposal Generator — AI adoption and work automation payback simulation
