Time-to-value is becoming the metric that matters in back-office optimisation – here’s why.

Back-office optimisation continues to be a top priority for business leaders, but the need to deliver value quickly has never been more urgent. The expectations of today’s boards and stakeholders are rapidly shifting: time-to-value is becoming a defining metric, and is reshaping how boards look at return on investment (ROI).

We know from our latest research produced with FT Longitude that 92% of leaders agree that optimising back and mid-office processes can create exponential growth in business value. The question is no longer whether or not to transform, but rather whether your programme is delivering value directly into the P&L yet.

Time-to-value: the metric that matters

Clearly, not all transformations are created equal. What it looks like in practice will vary significantly depending on business size, capability, capacity and culture. How businesses define speed and progress differs too, but what we are seeing consistently is that – particularly amid rapid technological change – expectations around value delivery and pace are much higher than in the past.

In the current landscape, a slow pace of change is both expensive and visible. 60% of procurement-outsourcing transitions now complete in under seven months, with a 34% efficiency lift and 23% better purchase cost savings, research from The Hackett Group found. A lack of momentum often means both missing out on financial outcomes, and losing credibility and buy-in during the process.

Time-to-value is a subtly different metric than ROI, internal rate of return (IRR) or Net Present Value (NPV) – the more widely-used markers of success until now. The time-to-value metric measures the amount of time it takes from a customer signing a contract to them seeing auditable financial value – it essentially asks, how quickly did the project actually start delivering?

Why the back-office is slowing businesses down

Of course, making genuine progress at speed is easier said than done. Even with the sophisticated technology now at our fingertips, low digital maturity and/or organisational complexity holds many businesses back. 2026 research from Hackett found that currently just 17% of organisations are truly adopting agentic AI, which we see as being driven by two key factors.

The first is largely down to legacy: creating a real appetite for change can be difficult, and people are often time-poor. The second reason is that AI, and agentic AI in particular, is a fundamentally different type of technology and experience to what has come before it. Traditional AI enhances how work is done; agentic AI redefines who (or what) does the work, shifting the focus from process efficiency to outcome ownership.

To really reap the benefits, organisations often need to re-think the way they operate and govern, which is time-consuming, complex and requires know-how.

It’s against this backdrop that Liberty Blume, built on human-powered technology, keeps experienced experts at its core. With technology evolving so quickly, organisations need experts who can guide them on processes, operating models and beyond. The best partners are those that are willing to guarantee outcomes and have skin in the game, rather than just facilitating innovation for its own sake.

How to spot value early

As delivering value at speed becomes increasingly important, my advice to CFOs and operating leaders embarking on an optimisation journey is to look out for early operational signals – often visible within weeks – that then lead to financial outcomes. The key is to define these operational signals from the outset, and track them throughout the process.

Take touchless invoice processing, delivered through our proprietary AP automation tool powered by AI technology. The leading metric is first-time-right invoice rate: each invoice processed without intervention bypasses exception handling, which drives the majority of AP cost. As a result, increasing first-time-right performance directly reduces the cost per invoice. At a typical client volume of 200,000 invoices, this delivers a 70-80% reduction in total processing cost, with benefits visible by month four or five. Realising this impact required fundamentally redesigning the underlying process to ensure the technology could deliver the intended outcome.

In today’s environment, slow optimisation isn’t necessarily the safer option. Over time, change fatigue sets in, milestones are missed, and engagement starts to drop. By making sure you have the right expertise and measuring the appropriate metrics, organisations can maximise value and, crucially, deliver value at pace.