Case Study: How Acme Corp Cut Approval Times by 70%

Acme Corp — a mid-size manufacturing company — faced slow approvals across procurement, hiring, and engineering changes. Average time-to-approve stretched between three to nine days. This case study explains how Acme redesigned their approval system and achieved a 70% reduction in average approval time.

Problem diagnosis

Acme's leadership team commissioned a three-week diagnostic with stakeholders from procurement, HR, engineering, and legal. Key findings:

• Lack of standardized request forms led to missing information and rework.
• Manual routing required multiple email threads and meetings.
• Approval authority thresholds were outdated and not mapped to current org structure.
• No centralized visibility meant requesters had to follow up repeatedly.

Design interventions

Acme followed a four-step plan: classify, simplify, automate, and measure.

1. Classify requests

They created a taxonomy: routine operational requests, strategic investments, compliance-critical, and emergency changes. Each class had a predefined path and SLA.

2. Simplify forms

Cross-functional teams redesigned form templates so that each request captured only necessary info. Smart fields and validations removed common causes of rework.

3. Automate deterministic checks

Using an approval automation platform, Acme auto-approved low-value purchase orders under $1,000, validated vendor onboarding docs, and routed HR requests to designated hiring managers based on team codes.

4. Visibility and SLAs

They implemented dashboards for requesters and approvers showing pending actions, SLA timers, and escalation statuses. Weekly reports highlighted bottlenecks.

Implementation details

A small cross-functional squad ran a 10-week sprint. Key to success:

• Executive sponsorship to change authority thresholds.
• Design sessions with approvers to reduce unnecessary mandatory fields.
• POC integrations with the ERP to pull spend data and the HRIS to map hiring approvers.
• Change management communications to socialize new SLAs and mobile approval features.

Results

Within three months Acme measured a 70% reduction in average approval time across routine requests. Specific achievements:

• Low-value purchase approvals: median time reduced from 48 hours to 2 hours.
• Hiring requisitions: time-to-approval dropped from 7 days to 2.5 days.
• Engineering emergency changes: rapid path reduced response time by 85%.
• User satisfaction went up; request-related nudge emails decreased by 60%.

Lessons learned

Several practical lessons emerged from the project:

• Slim the request: forms should be as small as possible while capturing required evidence.
• Delegate wisely: when risk is low, delegate approval to frontline managers.
• Measure initial baselines: without baselines you can’t prove impact.
• Invest in integrations: pulling contextual data into the approval screen reduced mental load for approvers.
• Iterate: start with the highest-volume, lowest-risk processes and expand automation gradually.

Conclusion

Acme’s success demonstrates that meaningful reductions in approval latency are possible without sacrificing compliance. The right mix of taxonomy, simplification, targeted automation, and executive support produced faster decisions and happier teams. Organizations looking to replicate Acme’s gains should begin with a short diagnostic, prioritize quick wins, and measure impact rigorously.

If you’d like a template of Acme’s classification matrix or a checklist to run your own diagnostic, sign up for our resource pack.