The Trouble with Gut Feel: Why You Need Baseline Data Before Changing Processes

In business, intuition has its place, but it’s a poor substitute for evidence.

When organisations embark on process improvement or implement new business software, there's often pressure to act quickly. Leaders want results. Staff want less admin. But without a reliable starting point, a baseline, any improvement is just a guess.

This guide explains why baseline data matters, what it should include, and how FlowCentric helps organisations measure before they move.

What Is Baseline Data?

Baseline data is a snapshot of how a process performs before any changes are made. It includes:

• Process cycle times
• Error or rework rates
• Volumes processed
• Staff touchpoints
• System handovers

Without this, you can’t quantify improvement, and you risk fixing what isn’t broken or missing what is.

Why Relying on Gut Feel Is Risky

1. Subjective bias: People tend to remember exceptions (the time something went wrong) rather than the norm.
2. Misdiagnosed problems: Without evidence, the “problem” identified may be a symptom, not the root cause.
3. No way to prove ROI: If you can’t measure the before and after, you can’t show the value of the change.
4. Scope creep: Vague objectives or loosely defined requirements often lead to shifting goals mid-project, causing frustration, delays, budget overruns, and resource strain.

What to Measure Before You Start

1. Process Timings: Record average and median times at each stage. Include delays and wait times.
2. Volume Metrics: How many transactions, requests, or cases flow through the process in a typical period?
3. Error and Exception Rates: Where do things go wrong? How often do tasks require rework or manual intervention?
4. Resource Usage: How many people are involved? How much time do they spend on each part?
5. Technology Interactions: Which systems are used, including messaging and ad hoc applications, and where do data handoffs or duplication occur?

Example: Diagnosing the Real Issue in a Travel Reimbursement Process

Consider a company aiming to speed up its travel reimbursement process. At first glance, leadership may have assumed that the approval chain was the main bottleneck. The process was manual: employees submitted paper forms, and the finance team typically took around 10 days to process each claim, with an error rate close to 25%. However, without baseline data, no one could say for certain where the real delays occurred.

Once baseline metrics were established, a clearer picture emerged:

• 80% of delays were due to employees submitting incomplete or incorrect forms
• Manual approvals, previously assumed to be the issue, only took about a day
• Data entry into the finance system added another 3 to 5 days

Streamlining approvals may have seemed like the obvious fix, but it wouldn’t have addressed the actual problems. Instead, the right solution involved introducing form validation and integrating the reimbursement process with the finance system to eliminate manual data entry.

This example highlights how collecting and analysing baseline data helps focus improvement efforts where they truly matter — solving the real problem, not just the visible one.

Final Word

Don’t start solving problems with a blindfold on. Baseline data helps you fix the right issues, prove your success, and avoid costly detours.

Contact FlowCentric to help you take back control of your business process and move your business from #ChaosToClarity.