How to size the gap in pesos before you ask for budget

On-Off Group

October 2026

Size the gap in pesos by counting what the current process actually does now, how many customers drop out or how long it takes, then multiplying that count by a rate finance already accepts. Use the conservative version of the number and show your working.

If you have a review this month and have to show the customer journey work is worth funding, this is for you. You have run the sessions. You have the maps. What you do not have is a number your boss will accept.

The usual answer is to put the fix in the slides and hope the story carries it. It rarely does. The question that kills it is simple: how much is this costing us right now.

Here is how to put a peso figure on the gap, using numbers the bank already collects. No new system, no research budget.

Pick one gap on the customer journey

The map on the wall usually has a dozen problems on it. Branch staff re-key data, documents get rejected, the app times out. All of it is real, and all of it together is impossible to price.

Pick one. The best candidate is a step where customers leave or where time disappears, because both of those are already counted somewhere in your bank.

Onboarding is the usual one. So is claims turnaround time. So is the wait between a customer submitting documents and someone in the back office looking at them.

Write the gap as a single sentence with a start and an end. "Between submitting documents online and account activation." If you cannot say where it starts and stops, you cannot count it, and if you cannot count it you cannot price it.

Count what happens now, before you change anything

Most teams skip this and go straight to the fix. Then six months later the boss asks whether it worked and there is nothing to compare against.

So count first. Two numbers usually do it: how many people enter the step, and how many come out the other end. For turnaround time, use the clock instead: median days from submission to decision, and the tail, because the tail is where the complaints come from.

Pull it from whatever exists. Core system exports, the call centre log, or branch staff keeping a tally for a week if that is all you have. A rough number you can explain where it came from is fine. Do not make one up.

If your last journey mapping session produced sticky notes and no figures, this piece covers how to run it differently: Instead of sticky notes on a wall, get a drop-off number out of the session.

Multiply the count by a rate finance already uses

This is the step people overthink. You do not need a new costing model. You need a rate that someone in finance has already signed off, so the argument moves off your numbers and onto theirs.

Usually it is one of these. Margin per new account, for customers who drop out. Cost per hour of branch or back office staff, for work that gets repeated. Cost per call, for the extra calls that broken step causes.

The sums are simple arithmetic. Say 2,000 people start the online application each month and 1,200 finish. That is 800 lost. If finance values a new account at 1,500 pesos of first-year margin, the step costs about 1.2 million pesos a month.

Show the working. Volume, loss rate, rate per unit. If your boss can check it in front of you, it holds up.

Take the lower number every time

Some of those 800 were never going to open an account. Some come back next week. If you claim the full 1.2 million, the first person who spots that takes the whole case down with it.

So cut it yourself before anyone else does. Take a cut you can justify, for example assume half the drop-outs were never going to open an account anyway. State the assumption out loud. The number is now 600,000 pesos a month, and it is yours to defend.

A smaller number you can defend stands a better chance of getting funded. It also protects you later, when you have to report what actually changed.

And if the honest number comes out small, say so and pick a different gap. That is a good outcome. You found out early instead of six months in.

Put a rough cost of the fix next to the peso figure

Once the gap has a peso figure, the next question is what a fix would cost and how long it would take. You do not need a solution design to answer that.

A series of five-day design sprints on customer-facing web journeys for a large insurer is a fair reference point. Journeys that used to take six months or more were designed, tested with customers, and live in four weeks. Completion rates on the new journeys went up 80 per cent, measured by the client, and the old drop-off points stopped happening. Those were the client's own numbers, before and after.

So what your boss sees is the monthly cost of the gap against a few weeks of work, rather than a six-month programme.

If you want to try the fix rather than keep scoping it, this one covers building a rough working version of an AI feature before the business case: build a rough working version of an AI feature instead of writing the business case first.

What to do this week

Write your gap as one sentence with a clear start and end point.
Get the two counts: how many enter that step each month, how many complete it. Or the median turnaround time and the tail.
Ask finance for one rate they already publish, and use theirs, not yours.
Do the multiplication, then halve it and write down why.
Put the monthly peso figure and the weeks-to-fix estimate on one page, with the working visible.

For sizing more than one gap at a time, there is a walkthrough at onoffgroup.com: Instead of hiring a strategy consultant, size the gap in two weeks.

Questions people ask

What if we have no baseline number at all?
Then the first two weeks of the work is getting one. Count the current volume, drop-off or turnaround time before anything changes, because without it nobody can tell later whether the pilot worked.

Which peso rate should I use?
Use a rate finance already publishes, such as average revenue per new account or the loaded cost of an hour of branch staff time. Borrowed rates survive questions better than ones you build yourself.

What if the gap turns out to be small?
Say so and move on to a bigger one. A small honest number protects you later, and it stops you spending six months on a problem that was never worth the budget.

On-Off Group trains teams, tests products with real customers, finds where a transformation has stalled and builds what gets it moving, for banks, insurers and enterprises in the Philippines, since 2015. How we help with baselines and measurement.