In the previous article in this series, I argued that building the revenue case means doing the maths: translating your intervention into numbers a finance audience can measure. When you’re talking to a CFO or Procurement, that’s usually where the conversation lives.

But efficiency is different. Time saved is only half the argument. The other half is what you do with it.

Logging tape at Sky News

Early in my career as a TV producer at Sky News, I spent hours logging video feeds. A press conference might run for an hour. To find the soundbite you needed, you watched the whole thing - or most of it - typing timecodes and quotes into a system as you went. Sometimes I scribbled notes in a hardback notebook, which meant the information never made it anywhere others could use it.

It was necessary work, but it ate up your shift, meaning less time for research, or to craft a better graphic. One story instead of two. And always the low hum of stress that comes from running out of hours.

Technology has changed all that.

Today, video editing tools like Final Cut Pro include text-searchable transcripts as standard. You can type a keyword, or even a phrase, and jump straight to the moment you need. What once took an hour now takes minutes.

That’s without doubt a transformation, but how do you communicate the impact?

Two audiences, two arguments

The answer depends on who you’re talking to.

For the CFO: you do the maths.

A producer at Sky News might earn roughly £50,000 a year - about £25 an hour. If the new tool saves 45 minutes per package, that’s £19 of time recovered per shift. The tool costs around £235 per seat. It pays for itself in under three weeks.

And compare that to the old world: enterprise media management systems could cost £100,000 a year or more. The same capability is now bundled into software costing a few hundred pounds.

For the Head of News: you show what the time buys.

Forty-five minutes saved per package means one extra piece per producer per week. Across a team of 24 producers, that’s 24 additional stories a week - more than 1,200 extra pieces of content per year. Without hiring anyone.

Or, if quantity isn’t the priority, it’s quality: better-crafted edits, less stress, lower burnout.

The CFO cares about money; the Head of News cares about output, or resilience. You need to know which argument lands with your audience.

The same logic, different sector

Let’s jump from news to wealth management.

The client onboarding process at one firm used to take a week. Advisors might spend a full day per client on paperwork and handoffs. The rest was waiting for compliance checks, document gathering, and system updates.

They implemented a new onboarding portal. The same process now takes 24 hours. Same rigorous checks,but faster, and with fewer manual errors.

For the CFO: it’s about, guess what? The maths again.

An advisor earning £150,000 costs roughly £75 an hour. If the old process consumed a day of advisor time per client, that’s over £500 per onboarding. Save most of that across 10 new clients a month, and you’re recovering £50,000+ a year in advisor time alone, and that’s before you’ve even factored in the Onboarding Team’s hours.

A portal costing £100,000 a year is close to paying for itself on advisor time alone. Add the efficiency gains elsewhere, and the case becomes obvious.

For the Head of Client Experience: it’s about the outcome.

Clients are live in a day, not a week, the warm feeling of making the right decision is prolonged with the slick service, and advisors freed from admin can spend more time with existing clients, or take on more new relationships without burning out.

No one argues that a week is better than a day. No one’s questioning the goal, but the sceptic might questioning whether you’ve done the maths, so…one of my favourite refrains: show you’re working!.

Show the threshold, not the proof

As with any impact argument, you may not have perfect data. You might not know exactly how much time the tool saves, or precisely how many extra packages get made.

So instead of claiming certainty, you show the threshold. What would the intervention need to deliver to pay for itself? When the answer is ‘three weeks’ or ‘fourteen hours per client’, the case makes itself. Your audience can see the bar, and then can judge whether they can clear it.

A method you can use

If you’re building an efficiency or speed case, here’s the approach:

1. Start with the cost of the intervention

2. Identify the time saved: per person, per task, per cycle

3. Translate that time into money (hourly cost × hours saved)

4. Calculate the break-even threshold

5. Show what the saved time produces: more output, better quality, freed capacity, reduced stress

6. Tailor the argument to your audience: money for finance, outcomes for operations

Efficiency arguments need both halves. The maths gets you through the door; the outcome is what makes people care.

Over to you!

Where are you struggling to make an impact argument? What’s the case you can’t quite land - with a CFO, a board, a sceptical stakeholder?

Keen to hear from you!

I spent twenty years in senior leadership roles at Sky, ITV, NBC News and Future Plc before becoming a Consulting Partner at Positive Momentum, where I advise organisations across financial services, sustainability and technology on strategy, storytelling and change. Impact Storytelling sits at the centre of that work.