A Salt Lake City operations manager took one hour in early January to audit the technology stack across his 30-person precision machining shop. What he found was eye-opening.
They had multiple communication tools nobody fully adopted. Engineering was storing files in two places. The front office was double-entering part specs into their ERP, CRM, and quoting software. It was costing them thousands each month — in wasted time, duplicate subscriptions, and breakdowns in communication.
By February, he had streamlined workflows, canceled overlapping tools, and automated the handoff between quoting and production. That one-hour audit reclaimed over 10 hours per person monthly. Multiply that by 30 employees at an average of $35/hour, and you’re looking at $126,000 annually in wasted labor.
He didn’t just stop the bleeding. He used the savings to fund bonuses and upgrade the shop floor WiFi.
Here’s how you can do the same — with smarter IT support for Salt Lake City manufacturers.
Money Pit #1: Communication Chaos (Cost: $4,500–$6,500/month for a 10-person team)
Your team bounces between Teams, texts, email, and maybe even walkie-talkies on the shop floor. Drawings are sent via email. Specs live in three places. Questions are asked in Slack and answered in Teams. Everyone is working from different information.
The Real Cost:
- Wasted hours searching for files
- Missed updates on production changes
- Onboarding new hires takes twice as long because nothing is centralized
Real Example: A local aerospace parts supplier had updates shared across Slack, ERP notes, and email threads. One missed dimension update caused a week-long delay and $8,000 in scrap.
The Fix:
- Pick ONE primary tool for each communication type:
- Urgent: Phone/radio
- Shop floor scheduling and tasks: ERP or MES only
- Cross-department communication: Teams or Slack (not both)
- File storage: Google Drive or SharePoint, not both
- Set the rule: "If it’s not in [chosen tool], it doesn’t exist."
Time Saved: Even a conservative 2 hours saved weekly per person = $36,400/year for a 10-person team.
Your Bonus Fund: That’s enough for a team retreat or new breakroom upgrades.
Money Pit #2: Disconnected Tools and Manual Data Entry (Cost: $400–$2,000/month)
New RFQs come in. Someone enters customer info into your CRM. Then someone else types it into your ERP. Then engineering copies part info into their system. By the time production sees it, the specs are a version behind.
Manual data entry = money leak.
Real Example: A plastics injection molding company in South Salt Lake was duplicating customer data across four systems. Each quote took 20 minutes of admin labor. They averaged 90 quotes per month.
That’s 30 hours monthly on manual data work: $12,600/year burned on something that could be automated.
The Fix:
- Use automation platforms like Zapier or Power Automate to sync CRM > ERP > Quoting system
- Implement one-click quote-to-order workflows inside your ERP
Time Saved: Cutting quote prep time from 20 minutes to 5 saves 22.5 hours/month = $9,450/year
Your Bonus Fund: That’s your next tool room upgrade or new barcode scanner rollout.
Money Pit #3: Paying For Software You Don’t Use (Cost: $500–$1,500/month)
You might be surprised what’s hitting your company card.
Ask yourself:
- Are we still paying for Zoom and Teams?
- Is anyone using that scheduling app we trialed last year?
- Why do we have three cloud storage accounts?
Real Example: A contract manufacturer found:
- Duplicated PM tools (Monday.com and Asana)
- Redundant file storage (Dropbox and Google Workspace)
- Legacy CAD viewer licenses nobody used anymore
Total waste: $9,200/year
The Fix:
- Pull the last 3 months of statements
- List all recurring SaaS charges
- For each:
- Used in last 30 days?
- Still relevant to team or operations?
- Is there a simpler tool that already does this?
- Cancel anything that fails all 3
Your Bonus Fund: Most shops find $6,000–$18,000/year hiding in forgotten software.
Add It Up: That’s Real Money
Let’s be conservative:
- Fixing communication = $36,400/year
- Automating quoting = $9,450/year
- Canceling waste = $9,200/year
Total: $55,050/year
That’s not theoretical. That’s cash currently going to waste in the background.
What could that fund?
- A new piece of machinery
- A well-earned employee bonus
- A backup internet line for uptime reliability
- That long-overdue IT overhaul
And yes—maybe that bonus trip to Hawaii.
Stop Bleeding Cash Into Bad Tech
The operations manager who caught the waste didn’t rip everything out. He spent one hour asking tough questions about what tools they were actually using, then made smart changes over 4–6 weeks.
The result:
- Fewer headaches
- Fewer silos
- More time for actual production
Click here to book your free network assessment with Qual IT. We’ll help you spot the waste, connect your systems, and put your tech dollars to work.
Because your budget should go toward uptime, not unused logins.
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