Given inflation, tariffs and the ever-present uncertainty looming over the business landscape, organizations face an imperative to do more with less. It’s a simple enough concept at face value, but what does it actually look like to pursue all avenues for additional efficiency?
Rather than spinning their wheels trying to find the One Efficiency Opportunity to Rule Them All, executives should adopt a strategy of “efficiency by a thousand cuts.” By applying the “5 Rs” (retain, remove, reduce, replace, rearchitect) and using AI agents to augment human labor, organizations can boost efficiency—incrementally, at scale—and increase revenue.
After all, a series of 1 percent gains in efficiency could add up to millions of dollars in revenue and recovered opportunity costs.
Introducing Digital Friction
It’s no secret that humans can’t be efficient all the time. We get distracted; we lose focus. But much of workers’ inefficiency is through no fault of their own. Rather, it’s due to digital friction.
Consider how much time is wasted, at scale, by employees navigating bloated tech stacks. Whether it’s switching from platform to platform, trying to remember which app is used for which singular task or simply waiting for legacy systems to load, all that time adds up.
Employees also involuntarily waste time by performing purely clerical, highly repeatable tasks. Surely there are other, more valuable, strategic tasks to be done, but they’re bogged down by administrative work.
These collective periods of idleness, wasted time and frustration are known as digital friction—and not only are they inefficient, but they’re also expensive. As of March 2025, the average private employer spends $45.38 per employee per hour. For an organization whose 100 employees experience just 30 minutes of digital friction per day, that adds up to well over half a million dollars in lost value every year.
Luckily, there are several ways leaders can begin chipping away at their digital friction to recoup the value they’ve inadvertently lost.
The Five Rs
One of the most effective ways to boost organizational efficiency at scale is to perform an audit of your tech stack. Chances are, most organizations have a great deal of unnecessary, redundant or unused apps and platforms that take up space and create digital friction. A detailed, methodical audit can help tech leaders and their teams identify which platforms to keep, which to scrap and which to modify.
Every single component of the tech stack must be evaluated and assigned one of the Five Rs:
- Retain: Keep the tool as-is
- Remove: Eliminate the tool
- Reduce: Limit usage/scope
- Replace: Find a better alternative
- Rearchitect: Keep the tool but modify to better suit needs
Performing this exercise will force teams to rationalize their usage of each item in their tech stack, rather than getting bogged down by “the way we’ve always done it.” It will likely take a great deal of time and effort, but it doesn’t have to be performed in one fell swoop.
But when all is said and done, tech leaders will have built a modernized, streamlined tech stack that solves real problems and doesn’t hold teams back from performing their best. From there, the priority should be training teams on any new processes or tools—and celebrating the new levels of efficiency and ease they’ll find in their day-to-day workflows.
Automation and Optimization
Even with a newly streamlined tech stack, there will still be ample opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce digital friction. This is where automation and optimization come in.
Organizations can derive significantly more value from their investments if their workforce is freed up to spend more time on strategic, value-additive tasks. This isn’t about transforming (read: upending) employees’ daily lives with overwhelming initiatives. It’s about incrementally delegating appropriate tasks to automated/agentic tools.
Maybe administrative assistants could use some help with scheduling meetings; maybe entry-level associates could spend less time on data entry and more time learning about analytics and adding value. These are tasks perfectly suited for AI agents, and delegating them at scale will help organizations save hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars every year. Ultimately, the goal is to up-level your employees from “doers” to “reviewers.”
Every Win Counts
“Efficiency by a thousand cuts” isn’t about being game-changing, ground-breaking or revolutionary—it’s about using a common-sense approach to methodically and incrementally improve organizational efficiency.
For leaders, maintaining and championing this perspective is key, and it will be contagious. If teams see their managers and directors determinedly identifying ways to be just a bit more efficient—and celebrating when they do—that energy will spread, and employees will begin examining their workflows and calling out additional avenues for improvement.
This philosophy is the gift that keeps on giving, and it’s never truly done. It’s a small but mighty mindset that can save millions of dollars, motivate teams and propel continuous innovation.
