You know manual reporting takes time. But have you calculated what it actually costs?
For most MSOs, the answer is uncomfortable: hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in direct and indirect costs.
The Direct Time Cost
Weekly Reporting Cycle
A typical MSO running 30 shops spends:
| Task | Hours/Week |
|---|---|
| Pulling reports from CCC (one per shop) | 5-8 hours |
| Cleaning and normalizing data | 3-4 hours |
| Building Excel summaries | 2-3 hours |
| Creating leadership presentations | 2-3 hours |
| Answering ad-hoc data requests | 2-4 hours |
| Total | 14-22 hours/week |
At $50/hour fully loaded cost, that's $700-1,100 per week just on routine reporting.
Annually: $36,000 - $57,000
Monthly Board Reporting
For PE-backed MSOs, add the board prep cycle: 18-28 hours/month at $75/hour.
Annually: $16,000 - $25,000
Total Annual Cost
30-shop MSO: $52,000 - $82,000 per year
For a 100-shop MSO, multiply by 2-3x.
The Hidden Costs
Direct labor is the tip of the iceberg.
Delayed Decisions
Weekly visibility (what most MSOs have):
- Problems surface 7-14 days after they start
- A cycle time spike in week 1 isn't visible until week 2
- By then, it's a pattern, not a blip
Daily visibility (what's possible):
- Problems surface in 24-48 hours
- Intervention happens before it compounds
Problems That Fester
Without real-time visibility, small issues become big ones:
- WIP aging: A few vehicles start aging. No one notices. Three weeks later, you have 15 vehicles over 30 days.
- Margin compression: Parts costs creep up at one shop. Six months later, margin is 8 points below target.
- Supplement delays: One carrier's approval times get worse. A year later, they're adding 5 days to every cycle time.
Opportunity Cost
Your ops leaders are spending 15+ hours per week on report production. What could they do instead?
- Shop visits and coaching
- Process improvement initiatives
- Acquisition integration
- Actual analysis instead of data wrangling
An ops VP spending 20% of their time on reporting is a significant misallocation.
What Automation Changes
| Manual Process | Automated Alternative |
|---|---|
| Pull reports from CCC (5-8 hrs) | Nightly automated sync (0 hrs) |
| Clean and normalize (3-4 hrs) | Pre-built data pipelines (0 hrs) |
| Build Excel summaries (2-3 hrs) | Always-current dashboards (0 hrs) |
| Create presentations (2-3 hrs) | Self-service executive views (0 hrs) |
Weekly time savings: 14-22 hours → 1-2 hours
The Breaking Point
At what scale does manual reporting become unsustainable?
- 5-10 shops: Annoying but manageable
- 15-30 shops: Pain increases. One person spending most of their time on reporting.
- 30+ shops: Breaking point. Manual processes can't keep up.
- 50+ shops: Crisis. Multiple people dedicated to reporting. Still not getting timely visibility.
If you're approaching the breaking point, the cost of not investing exceeds the cost of building.