Are We Getting What We Paid For With This Tech?

It is the question every organization eventually asks, usually right after the implementation dust settles and the invoices start rolling in.

How do you prove your tech is pulling its weight?

It sounds straightforward, but the truth is that ROI is rarely just a dollar-in, dollar-out calculation. The real return shows up in time, adoption, process flow, team satisfaction, and the quiet little shifts in how work actually happens.

First, Get a Baseline

You cannot calculate improvement without knowing where you started.
👉 How long does a process take today?
👉 How many steps does it require?
👉 How many people touch it?
👉 How much time is lost to manual workarounds?

A baseline gives you something to compare against once the technology is implemented. Without it, ROI becomes a guessing game.

Track How People Actually Use the Product

Before you calculate anything, you need to know if the technology is being used the way it was intended. You would be shocked by how many companies invest in powerful tools only to discover that half the features sit completely untouched.

Usage data tells a story.
Is the team adopting the tool?
Are the features you paid for actually supporting daily work?

If adoption is low, you do not have an ROI problem. You have an implementation and alignment problem.

Interview Your Employees

This is the simplest and most overlooked step. Ask your people.

When you talk to employees about how a system impacts their work, you learn quickly whether the tool is solving the right problem. Sometimes they love the new workflow. Sometimes they quietly hate it. And sometimes they have built their own workarounds because the process does not match reality.

A single conversation can reveal friction points that never show up on a dashboard.

Do a Short-Term Time Study

No one loves doing time studies, but they work.

A short-term (1-4 weeks) study can shed light on the true cost of your processes. Especially the invisible admin work that slowly eats up productivity.

It is very common to discover that a ten-minute task really takes 45 when you account for system lag, duplicate entry, hunting for information, or waiting on someone else. Multiply that by an entire team and suddenly your ROI math looks very different.

Remember: ROI Is Not Always About Money

Some of the most meaningful returns show up as time saved and frustration reduced.

I once worked with an organization using an archaic CRM platform. It was so clunky that new sales hires were quitting within months. They wanted to sell, not fight with software. The cost of turnover was enormous, far outweighing any license fee.

When they switched to a modern system, their retention improved and so did their pipeline. The ROI had less to do with dollars saved and more to do with keeping talented people who could actually perform.

Time, morale, and reduction in friction are real returns. They rebuild capacity you did not even realize you had lost.

A Curious Approach

Determining ROI is not about proving you made the right choice. It is about understanding how work happens today, how it improves tomorrow, and whether the technology you invested in is freeing your people to do their best work.

Curiosity is your greatest tool here. Track usage. Ask questions. Study the work. Capture the baseline. Then measure the progress you actually care about.

How Insightfully Curious Consulting Can Help

At the end of the day, technology should make your work easier, not heavier. But it is hard to see the full picture from inside the daily grind. That is where an outside perspective can be powerful.

At Insightfully Curious, we help organizations analyze their current systems, understand how teams are actually using them, and uncover where the real value is hiding. Sometimes the tech is great and simply needs better adoption. Sometimes the workflows need a refresh. And sometimes the system is doing the opposite of what you intended and costing you far more in time and morale than you realize.

Our curiosity-first approach helps you see what is working, what is not, and what to do next. Because when you understand the truth behind your tech, you can finally answer the question that matters most: Are we getting the most out of this?

If you are ready for a clearer picture of your tech ROI, Insightfully Curious can help you get there.

Contact us at: askquestions@insightfullycurious.com