The short answer
Mapping one process takes about three and a half hours: 20 minutes to agree where it starts and ends, an hour to walk through it as it really happens, 40 minutes to add the systems and minutes, half an hour to mark the waste, 40 minutes to draw the better version and 20 minutes to turn the differences into a ranked list. Below is that afternoon, step by step, for one example company.
The company is illustrative but typical: a 25-person heating and ventilation installer that receives about 120 inquiries a month. The process is "from inquiry to signed quote". For the general method, read How to map a business process in one afternoon. This article shows what it looks like when you do it.
13:00. Agree the start, the end and who is in the room
Start: a potential customer asks for a price. End: the customer signs the quote, or says no. Everything in between is in scope; the installation itself is not.
In the room: the office manager who takes the inquiries, one estimator who visits sites and writes quotes, the sales lead who approves large quotes and the owner, who mostly listens. Four people, one whiteboard, phones face down.
13:20. Walk through the process as it is
Pick a real inquiry from last week and follow it. Inquiries arrive three ways: the website form, email and phone. The office manager types each one into a shared spreadsheet, calls the customer back to arrange a site visit, and emails the estimator. The estimator visits, takes notes on paper, then writes the quote in Word, copying prices from an Excel price list. Quotes over €5,000 are emailed to the sales lead for approval. The PDF goes to the customer, and someone follows up if they remember.
On the whiteboard that is 14 steps in three lanes. Six of them are someone copying information from one place to another. Nobody in the room had seen all 14 together before, which is normal.
14:20. Add the systems and the minutes
Under each step, write the tool it happens in and how long it takes. Ask the person who does it, and ask for a normal case, not the best one.
Illustrative example. Site visit time is left out because it stays the same in the improved process.
At an employer cost of about €16.29 per hour (the Latvian average in 2026, see What manual work really costs your company), 140 hours is roughly €2,280 a month. Estimators usually cost more than the average, so this is the floor.
15:00. Mark the waiting, rework and copying
Go through the map with four coloured markers. Waiting: approval emails sit for one to three days, and the customer waits on average six working days for a quote. Rework: about one quote in ten is corrected because a price in the Excel list was out of date. Copying: inquiry details are typed into the spreadsheet, the email to the estimator and the quote. One critical person: only the sales lead can approve, and when they are on holiday quotes stop.
The red marks make one thing obvious: the 45 minutes of quote writing is mostly copying prices and customer details, not thinking about the job.
15:30. Draw the to-be process
Now draw how it should work. Form and email inquiries go straight into the CRM with an owner. The customer picks a site visit time from a booking link. The estimator builds the quote from a template that pulls the current price list and the customer details from the CRM. Quotes over €5,000 get a one-click approval with a deputy when the sales lead is away. A reminder goes out automatically on day three and day seven.
16:10. Turn the differences into a ranked list
Every difference between the two maps is one piece of work. Put the hours next to each and sort.
Illustrative. Hours × €16.29 average employer cost per hour in Latvia. Faster quotes and fewer forgotten follow-ups usually win more jobs too; that is not counted here.
The first item alone is worth more than the next three together, so that is where the build starts. What one freed hour is worth explains why the real value of those hours is often higher than the staff cost.
Before you close the session
The process has a start and an end written as "from … to …".
The map follows a real case from last week, not the ideal one.
Every step has its tool and its minutes, given by the person who does it.
Waiting, rework, copying and single points of failure are marked.
The to-be map exists and the differences are a list with hours next to them.
One person owns the list and a date is set to start the first item.
