Deutsch (Deutschland) 
Polski (PL) 
Independent IFS Cloud practice · Supply Chain
The cost of looking: what manual order monitoring really costs in IFS Cloud
Key takeaways
- A buyer spending two hours a day checking order states burns roughly 480 hours a year - a quarter of a full headcount - on work IFS could finish in seconds.
- The real cost is not the exceptions that get missed; it is the ones caught manually, because every save masks a process that should not need a person watching it.
- It survives because nobody has translated “checking” into hours × people × days, so it never shows up as a line on any budget.
- Converting the routine checks into Custom Event triggers frees the buyer’s time for the decisions a system genuinely cannot make.
A buyer spends two hours a day checking order states. Two hours, five days a week, forty-eight working weeks a year. That is four hundred and eighty hours -close to twelve full working weeks - spent on something a system could do in seconds. Not because IFS cannot do it. Because nobody configured it to. This is the hidden cost of manual monitoring, and it is easy to miss precisely because it never looks like a cost. It looks like diligence. The buyer feels productive, the exceptions get caught, the organisation sees results, and nobody asks whether the same result could have been achieved without quietly consuming a quarter of a full-time employee’s year. The most expensive monitoring is the kind that works well enough that no one ever questions what it costs to run.
1.Why does manual monitoring survive so long?
Checking order states by hand feels responsible. It is visible, it produces catches, and it never triggers the awkward conversation an automation project does: budget, scope, who owns it. A buyer who scans the screen every morning is doing exactly what a good buyer is supposed to do, and that is precisely why nobody questions whether it should be a screen-scan at all.
It survives because the cost is invisible on the org chart. Two hours a day never appears on an invoice, a project plan, or a monthly report; it simply disappears into “buyer work,” alongside negotiation, expediting and everything else the role covers. Nobody totals the hours, so nobody ever sees the number large enough to act on.
2.What does manual monitoring actually cost?
The bill is not one number, it is several, and none of them appear next to “monitoring” on any report:
- Direct hours. Two hours a day, every working day, is time that never gets billed to a project or a supplier, and it simply is not available for anything else.
- Opportunity cost. That time could go to negotiation, supplier development or root-cause work, the parts of the role a system genuinely cannot do.
- Inconsistent coverage. A person scanning a screen catches what they have time and attention for that day, not what the business actually needs caught.
- Invisible headcount. Across a team of buyers, the same two hours multiplies into a role’s worth of capacity that nobody budgeted for and nobody can reassign.
The most expensive monitoring is the kind that works. It works well enough that nobody ever asks what it costs to keep running.
3.How do you quantify it in IFS Cloud?
The starting point is not a system query, it is a short conversation, timed honestly: ask each buyer what they check every day, how long it takes, and why they check it manually instead of relying on a report. Most of what surfaces is repetitive (the same filter, the same sort, the same screen, scanned for the same handful of conditions), which is exactly the pattern a Custom Event is built to replace.
Once the checks are listed, IFS itself can usually already answer the underlying question (unconfirmed orders, orders below a coverage threshold, deliveries running late) through the same data the buyer is reading by eye. The audit does not need new instrumentation, only the discipline to write down what “I just check it every morning” is actually costing, in hours, every week.
4.Manual scanning versus automated monitoring
The comparison is not about accuracy, because a careful buyer is usually accurate. It is about where the hours go and whether coverage depends on a person’s calendar.
| Manual | Automated | |
|---|---|---|
| Time cost | ~2 hours/day per buyer | Seconds, on schedule |
| Consistency | Depends on the day | Same rule, every day |
| Scales with orders | No: more volume means more hours | Yes, at no extra hours |
| Visible as a cost | No: buried in “buyer work” | Yes: a rule with a scope and a log |
| Buyer’s time goes to | Scanning a screen | The exceptions that actually need judgement |
Automating the check does not remove the buyer’s job. It removes the part of the job that was never really a judgement call (scanning for a state that a rule can recognise faster and more consistently) and leaves the buyer with the exceptions that genuinely need a person’s experience.
5.How do you roll it out safely?
Start with the check that costs the most hours, not the one that feels most urgent.
- Time the checks. Ask each buyer what they scan for daily and how long it takes; rank the list by hours, not by drama.
- Pick the top check. Turn the single highest-cost manual scan into a Custom Event and run it in dry-run against real data.
- Compare the catch. Match what the rule flags against what the buyer was catching by hand for a real week.
- Go live for one buyer. Let them stop scanning that one screen and confirm nothing that mattered was missed.
- Repeat down the list. Move to the next highest-cost check once the first is trusted, tracking hours freed as you go.
Because each rule is built inside the IFS Extensibility Framework (standard Custom Events, Workflows and PL/SQL), it is update-safe and stays out of the core, which is also why teams that automate this way tend to see up to 60% less regression testing at the next upgrade: there is simply less bespoke code sitting in the path of the release.
6.Frequently asked questions
How do we estimate the real cost of manual monitoring?
Ask each buyer or planner what they check daily by habit rather than by system alert, and how many minutes each check takes. Multiply by working days and headcount. Most teams are surprised the number reaches hundreds of hours a year once it is added up honestly.
Will automating this replace the buyer’s role?
No. It removes the repetitive scanning, not the judgement. The freed hours typically go straight back into negotiation, supplier development and the exceptions that genuinely need a person, which is the work the role was always supposed to prioritise.
Which checks are worth automating first?
Whichever consumes the most hours across the most people, not whichever feels most dramatic. A five-minute daily check done by twenty buyers usually costs more, in aggregate, than one buyer’s occasional deep investigation.
Is this update-safe?
Yes. Each monitoring rule is built with standard Custom Events, Workflows and PL/SQL inside the IFS Extensibility Framework, with no core modification. Nothing here is the kind of customisation that the next R1/R2 release quietly breaks.
7.About the author
Dariusz Myśliwiec: 18 years hands-on with IFS (Apps 7.5–10 and IFS Cloud). IFS Certified Associate Consultant. PRINCE2® 7. Independent practice based in Kraków, delivered remotely across Europe and globally. You talk to the consultant who builds it, not a sales layer.
Selected clients: Fugro · LGC · BVI Medical · Betafence (PRÆSIDIAD) · Barlinek · NGK Ceramics · Newag · Oleofarm.
IFS is a registered trademark of IFS AB; this practice is not affiliated with IFS AB.
Stop paying for looking
If your buyers are quietly spending hours a week scanning screens IFS could watch for them, a short time-audit will show you exactly how many. On a 30-minute call I’ll map the highest-cost checks to automation rules: fixed price, dry-run before anything changes.
