The 90-Minute Operational MOT: A Practical Audit for UK SME Owners

Most operational reviews expand to fill the time available. A consultant arrives, interviews a dozen people, produces a heat map and leaves the owner with a document that is long on observation and short on action. The alternative is a tighter instrument: a 90-minute audit that a UK SME owner can run with one or two colleagues, using evidence already in the business. The aim is not a comprehensive diagnosis. It is to surface bottlenecks, score them simply and commit to three prioritised fixes.

Set the clock and the scope

Book 90 minutes in a room without interruptions. Bring four pieces of evidence: a recent customer order and its invoice; a supplier purchase order and delivery note; last week's staff rota or job schedule; and a sample of data entered into two systems. The audit covers four checkpoints: order-to-cash, supplier handoffs, scheduling and data entry. Assign one person to take notes and another to keep time. At 30, 60 and 85 minutes, the timekeeper calls progress.

The four checkpoint checklist

Order-to-cash

• Trace one order from receipt to cash. Count every handoff: sales, credit control, operations, dispatch, invoicing.
• Where does the order wait? Record the longest gap and who or what causes it.
• Is credit approval separate from order entry? How long does approval take?
• Is the invoice raised automatically on dispatch, or does someone rekey the details?
• Review the last month's credit notes and payment queries. What are the top three reasons for delay?

Supplier handoffs

• Follow one purchase order to goods received. Who checks quantity and quality?
• Are approval thresholds written down, or held in someone's head?
• Does the warehouse know when a delivery is due, and does accounts payable know when it arrived?
• What happens when a delivery is short or late? Is there a named owner for the supplier chase?

Scheduling

• How are jobs, appointments or production slots booked? Is the schedule a shared system or a spreadsheet on one desk?
• How much buffer is built in, and how often is it consumed by last-minute changes?
• Can the person doing the work see the schedule without asking?
• What measure of utilisation is used, and is it reviewed weekly?

Data entry

• Where is the same information entered more than once? List every rekey.
• Which spreadsheets are used to bridge systems, and who maintains them?
• Are there manual checks that exist only because a system field is unreliable?
• How are errors corrected, and is the correction fed back to the source?

Do not solve problems in the room. Note them.

Common bottleneck patterns to watch for

• The approval cul-de-sac: a single person must approve discounts, credit or purchases, and work queues behind them. The fix is usually delegated thresholds, not more software.
• The invisible rekey: data is copied from email into the finance system, then into a spreadsheet. The cost is hidden in salary, not in a line item.
• The schedule that serves the spreadsheet: the rota is built for reporting rather than for the person doing the job, so buffers are invisible and changes cascade.
• The supplier chase loop: no one owns the mismatch between ordered, delivered and invoiced quantities, so every query restarts from scratch.

A simple scoring method

Use a five-point scale for each checkpoint. Score 1 where the process is manual, has no named owner and delays are routine. Score 3 where there is a workaround, a known owner and occasional delay. Score 5 where the process has a clear owner, is measured and exceptions are escalated. Total the four scores out of 20. Do not aim for a perfect score; aim for the lowest two scores and the pattern behind them. A score of 1 or 2 in order-to-cash usually points to a cash-flow fix. A low score in data entry often explains errors elsewhere.

From score to three fixes

List every issue from the checklists. For each, estimate impact on cash, customer service or staff time, and effort to fix. Choose three fixes that can be completed within 30 days. One should address the lowest-scoring checkpoint. One should remove a handoff or a rekey. One should give a named owner a weekly measure. Write each fix as an action, an owner and a completion date. Examples: move credit approval for orders under £2,000 to the account manager; automate invoice creation from dispatch; publish a single weekly schedule with a buffer rule; stop rekeying supplier quantities by using the goods-received note as the source.

Close the loop

Put a 30-minute review in the diary for four weeks' time. Check the three fixes, not the whole audit. If a fix has not happened, ask whether the owner had the authority and the time. The 90-minute audit is deliberately small. Its value comes from repetition: run it again next quarter, rescore the same four checkpoints and compare. That is how an SME builds operational discipline without buying a large programme or waiting for a consultant's report.