March 18, 2025 | 5 min read

What businesses need to know about task efficiency

For a thriving business, operational efficiency is non-negotiable.

As companies scale, their workflows become more complex and high-volume. Without full visibility into task execution, inefficiencies go unnoticed, leading to blind process improvements that can create confusion and process friction. Mismanaged processes result in unnecessary costs and delays, exactly the opposite of what successful business aims to achieve.

A truly efficient company orchestrates business processes to drive financial growth and performance. To reach an unprecedented level of operational efficiency, business must understand processes at the task level and pinpoint specific areas for improvement.

One of the most effective ways to gain accurate data-driven insights into task efficiency is through Task Mining.

Let’s unfold how inefficiencies may impact business performance and how you can eliminate them with Task Mining to unlock maximum business value.

Hidden cost of inefficient tasks

Inefficiencies occur at various levels of business processes, but they all may lead to major financial losses. Many stem from routine manual tasks that slow down workflows and drain productivity. Over time, these inefficiencies scale up, increasing operational costs and wasted employee working hours that could be redirected to high-value initiatives.

Without detailed task-level analytics, identifying and addressing these inefficiencies is almost impossible.

Task Mining helps to uncover even the smallest inefficiencies in business tasks. It enables companies to address:

increased labor costs
longer execution times
human errors

With AI-powered task-level analytics, businesses can pinpoint friction-prone areas, find the most repetitive manual tasks and calculate economic gains from task automation with 100% accuracy.

Key metrics for measuring task efficiency

To measure task efficiency and make data-driven automation decisons, businesses need to track the following metrics:

Employee workload distribution. Identify task assignees and how much time every assigned employee spends on task execution.
Task completion time. Measure how long every task takes from start to finish. For example, invoice processing includes multiple steps like invoice reception, validation, approval and payment. Task Mining tracks the duration of each, providing granular insights on steps performed within tasks.
Task execution frequency. Pinpoint the most repetitive manual tasks that consume employees’ time. Task Mining automatically ranks tasks by priority and shows those with highest automation potential and greatest economic impact.

How Task Mining improves productivity

Traditionally business analysts relied on employee interviews to understand ‘as-is’ workflows, often resulting in biased and incomplete process data. This approach was not only time-consuming but also prone to human error.

Task Mining eliminates the guesswork by automatically capturing task execution data, revealing inefficiencies. Unlike traditional business analytics tools, Task Mining provides:

real-time insights on task execution
accurate labor cost calculations
precise number of executed tasks
automation potential identification

In contrast to traditional business analytics tools, Task Mining provides detailed task execution dashboards with real-time insights on labor costs, task frequency, and automation potential – all in one place. Only this level of accuracy can help you achieve operational efficiency through business automation.

Benefits of Task Mining for measuring task efficiency

Full visibility into task execution – gain real-time insights into how employees perform tasks and where inefficiencies exist
High-friction areas – detect manual tasks that slow down business processes
Smarter automation with AI-driven tools – transform data-backed insights into the best automation initiatives
Data-driven decisions with task-level analytics – move away from guesswork and base decisions on actual execution data
Standardized operating procedures (SOPs) – establish best practices based on workflow patterns to improve compliance and efficiency

How Operavix measures task efficiency

Operavix platform provides deep task-level analytics through comprehensive reports on task execution in the form of interactive dashboards. These reports include:

total number of tasks executed
employees involved in execution
overall labor costs for task execution

Knowing the average time spent on a task, it’s possible to set a benchmark for every single task and calculate optimal time and resources required for task execution. As a result of the calculations, Task Mining will show top tasks ready for automation.

Operavix customer story on task-level procurement automation

A leading pharmaceutical company struggled with slow and costly procurement processes. Inefficiencies in supplier management and payment approvals led to increased operational costs.

payment request handling
supplier price updates

By leveraging task-level analytics, the procurement department streamlined business processes, reduced manual workload, and improved contract management. Through integration of corporate systems with corporate registries and government compliance databases, the company automated the most routine manual tasks. As a result of the task automation, they successfully accelerated the procurement cycle by 17%.

Want to uncover and eliminate hidden inefficiencies in your workflows?

See how leading businesses optimize operations with Task Mining. Leverage Task Mining today for full transparency and smarter automation. Check out more success stories on Operavix Customer page.