End-to-end outcomes · the gaps between functions
Handoff economics
Six mapped cross-function flows contain 25 handoffs — the moments work stops being one function’s problem and becomes another’s. Each is priced three ways: what the wait costs, what re-keying the same data costs, and what sending it back costs. An outcome is assembled, not recorded. No source system in this estate stamps a single reference across a purchase requisition, the order raised against it and the receipt that closes it, so the chains on these pages were stitched together after the fact. Where both documents sit in the same source system the chain is keyed and the join is exact. Where it crosses a system boundary the chain is matched on the party, the market, the region and whether the timing is plausible, and it is labeled inferred with its confidence shown. Where the two sides name no party in common the only evidence left is place and timing, and the chain is labeled cohort and confidence is capped low on purpose. A cohort chain is a hypothesis about which documents belong together. Read it as one.
What the money between functions is actually spent on
$3.5m a week, split three ways
By flow
Six flows, and where each one leaks
A flow is a named piece of work that crosses functions on its way to somebody outside the group. The last handoff in each is the one that leaves the group entirely.
Intent to Commitment
5 handoffs · 2 gates · none measured
Supply Disruption Response
4 handoffs · 2 gates · 1 measured
Hire to Productive
4 handoffs · 1 gate · 1 measured
Defect to Disclosure
4 handoffs · 3 gates · none measured
Invention to Investment
4 handoffs · 2 gates · none measured
Source to Settle
4 handoffs · 1 gate · 1 measured
Every handoff, priced
25 boundaries, most expensive first
| Boundary | Flow | Items/wk | Mean wait | p90 wait | Rework | Re-keyed | Cost/wk | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
HR → ITdisputed wait observed on assembled chains | Hire to Productive | 8,900 | 27.7h | 39.1h | 8.1% | 51% | $295,817 | Grace Mutiso |
Engineering → Finance wait modeled from the flow design | Invention to Investment | 5,514 | 43.6h | 91.1h | 5.0% | 41% | $244,962 | nobody |
Finance → The customer wait modeled from the flow design | Intent to Commitment | 5,332 | 36.1h | 89.3h | 5.0% | 49% | $211,472 | nobody |
Legal → Finance wait modeled from the flow design | Intent to Commitment | 4,482 | 43.2h | 131.2h | 9.4% | 45% | $200,693 | nobody |
IT → Admin wait modeled from the flow design | Hire to Productive | 5,440 | 33.4h | 91.5h | 5.4% | 18% | $187,628 | nobody |
R&D → Legal wait modeled from the flow design | Invention to Investment | 2,549 | 74.8h | 230.0h | 5.8% | 24% | $186,904 | nobody |
Engineering → Legal wait modeled from the flow design | Defect to Disclosure | 2,614 | 74.7h | 152.9h | 4.6% | 15% | $185,628 | nobody |
Procurement → Supply Chain wait observed on assembled chains | Supply Disruption Response | 4,800 | 34.1h | 54.0h | 4.1% | 51% | $174,751 | nobody |
Admin → Finance wait modeled from the flow design | Hire to Productive | 5,219 | 31.9h | 60.8h | 7.6% | 12% | $167,271 | nobody |
Procurement → Supply Chaindisputed wait observed on assembled chains | Source to Settle | 4,800 | 34.1h | 54.0h | 4.1% | 13% | $163,913 | Diego Fuentes |
Legal → Marketing wait modeled from the flow design | Defect to Disclosure | 2,832 | 52.2h | 143.7h | 3.0% | 49% | $158,561 | Colm Brennan |
Legal → Engineering wait modeled from the flow design | Invention to Investment | 5,236 | 21.3h | 67.5h | 10.6% | 29% | $141,490 | nobody |
Supply Chain → Finance wait modeled from the flow design | Source to Settle | 3,827 | 34.8h | 68.0h | 15.1% | 13% | $141,287 | nobody |
Marketing → Sales wait modeled from the flow design | Intent to Commitment | 4,904 | 23.6h | 60.7h | 7.8% | 47% | $133,464 | nobody |
AI GBS → The supplier wait modeled from the flow design | Source to Settle | 3,132 | 32.9h | 86.8h | 8.5% | 64% | $126,809 | nobody |
RevOps → Legal wait modeled from the flow design | Intent to Commitment | 2,036 | 60.5h | 124.5h | 12.3% | 50% | $124,455 | nobody |
Finance → The investment committee wait modeled from the flow design | Invention to Investment | 3,507 | 31.6h | 82.5h | 4.6% | 49% | $119,190 | Nils Andersen |
Finance → Legal wait modeled from the flow design | Supply Disruption Response | 1,696 | 73.0h | 155.0h | 6.1% | 18% | $116,535 | nobody |
Customer Service → Engineering wait modeled from the flow design | Defect to Disclosure | 2,966 | 32.6h | 93.3h | 4.1% | 17% | $95,404 | nobody |
Legal → Site operations wait modeled from the flow design | Supply Disruption Response | 1,537 | 47.3h | 99.5h | 9.6% | 51% | $74,013 | nobody |
Finance → The line manager wait modeled from the flow design | Hire to Productive | 2,339 | 22.9h | 45.7h | 13.7% | 54% | $66,763 | nobody |
Finance → AI GBSdisputed wait modeled from the flow design | Source to Settle | 2,156 | 21.1h | 47.2h | 6.6% | 12% | $49,101 | Sofia Kalogeropoulou |
Supply Chain → Finance wait modeled from the flow design | Supply Disruption Response | 1,376 | 27.7h | 54.4h | 8.7% | 39% | $45,553 | nobody |
Sales → RevOps wait modeled from the flow design | Intent to Commitment | 1,192 | 25.5h | 71.1h | 6.0% | 31% | $34,382 | Beatriz Salgado |
Marketing → The regulator wait modeled from the flow design | Defect to Disclosure | 486 | 48.0h | 100.3h | 11.4% | 35% | $24,915 | nobody |
The re-keying tell
Where no correlation key survives the boundary
What is measured and what is asserted
Read this before quoting any figure above
A handoff counts as measured only when at least twenty assembled chains actually cross that boundary in the sampled week, so its wait is a real observation. 3 of 25 clear that bar, carrying $634k of the $3.5m. The other 22 are priced from the flow design and prove nothing about the business.
Volumes are grossed up fifty times from a two percent sample, so 88,872 items a week is a scaled figure, not a count. The holding rate, the rework minutes and the re-keying minutes behind every dollar on this page are modeling assumptions rather than measurements. Cost to serve is modeled from the touches the ledger recorded, not billed from a timesheet. Every touch is priced at 11 minutes of a person at a loaded 58 dollars an hour, and every stage carries 1.10 dollars of system cost and 0.42 dollars of inference. Handoff cost is priced separately: waiting is held at 0.90 dollars an item an hour, rework at 34 minutes, and duplicated data entry at the re-keying minutes recorded against that handoff. Change any of those six rates and every dollar on these pages moves.
The single most expensive boundary is HR → IT at $296k a week on 27.7 h of average wait, and it is one of the measured ones. 3 of these boundaries are the subject of an open argument about who owns the delay.
Actions
What is waiting on a person
A handoff is the moment work leaves one function and becomes another function’s problem. Every count below is a handoff where nobody has taken responsibility for what happens in the gap.
Instrument a handoff nobody is timing
Its wait, rework and re-keying rates are modeled from the flow design, not observed. 22 of 25 handoffs carry no assembled chains crossing them, so the price attached to each is an assumption.
Name an owner for a handoff
Both functions can point at the other. $2.6m a week of wait, rework and duplicated entry sits on handoffs with nobody accountable for the gap itself.
Remove a re-keying step at a boundary
More than three in ten items are typed a second time into the receiving system, which is the clearest evidence that no key survives the handoff.
Break a handoff averaging over 40 hours of wait
Work sits at the boundary for more than a working week before the receiving function starts. The slowest is R&D to Legal at 74.8 hours.
Assign a human gate that has no named holder
A gate stops the work until somebody approves it, and 9 of the 11 gates in these flows name no person who holds it.
Fix a boundary sending one in ten items back
Rework at a handoff is paid twice: once by the sending function and once by the receiving one, and neither books it against the outcome.
Arbitrate a handoff two functions are arguing about
The delay at this boundary is claimed by neither side. It has an open entry in the boundary dispute register.
Operations
What this desk is allowed to start
A surface that only reports is not operable. This is the work this page can set in motion, and the bound it runs into.
Trigger and bound
This page can price what happens between functions: how long work waits at each of the 25 handoffs, how often it comes back, how often it is typed in twice, and what that costs in a week. It cannot move a handoff, appoint an owner, remove a gate or change a re-keying step. Every rate on the page is a modeling assumption stated on the page itself.
Live observability
What the record shows right now
The weekly cost of the 25 handoffs decomposed into the 3 things that are actually paid for, in dollars, summing to $3.5m: no other cost is attributed to a boundary, and each dollar appears in exactly one bar.
Current distribution
3,470,961 dollars a week
Is policy and strategy coming to fruition
Whether the written intent is holding here
$3.5m a week is spent between functions rather than inside them, and 19 of 25 handoffs have nobody accountable for it.
Not holding on the record
The doctrine behind the cross-flow layer is that work crossing functions should have one owner for the whole crossing, not two owners for the two halves. Priced against the six mapped flows it is not holding. $2.9m of the $3.5m weekly cost is pure waiting, $323k is the same data being typed in a second time and $210k is work coming back. 19 of the 25 handoffs name no owner at all, including 9 of the 11 human gates, which are the points where the work is deliberately stopped. The measurement is weaker than the finding: only 3 of the 25 handoffs have enough assembled chains crossing them to observe a real wait, so the other 22 are priced from the flow design and prove nothing about the business. Treat the shape as the finding and the dollars as the hypothesis.