The Silent Killer of Productivity: The "Glue Work" Problem
Across industries, a critical bottleneck is slowing progress: Glue Work. This refers to the low-value, repetitive tasks that consume valuable time and energy.
The Workforce Struggle
A significant 80% of the global workforce reports lacking the time or energy to complete their core work.
The Executive Gap
While 75% of executives believe AI will determine their business's survival in the next five years, only 33% have a formal AI strategy in place.
The Cost of Inefficiency
A single quarterly report for a senior engineer can consume ten full working days of manual glue work.
What is "Glue Work"?
Glue work refers to the low-value, repetitive, non-integrated routines that are essential but don't move the needle on your core business objectives:
- ⚠️Collating data from multiple sources (emails, spreadsheets, databases)
- ⚠️Formatting complex reports manually for different stakeholders
- ⚠️Copying information between systems that don't talk to each other
- ⚠️Scheduling meetings and coordinating across time zones
- ⚠️Answering repetitive questions that could be automated
- ⚠️Manually updating status reports across multiple tools
A Real-World Example
Quarterly Reporting Nightmare
The Scenario:
A senior engineer needs to prepare a quarterly report for leadership showing project progress, resource utilization, and risk assessment.
The Process (Current State):
- Export data from 5 different systems (Jira, Confluence, GitHub, Slack, Excel)
- Manually reconcile timestamps and user IDs across systems
- Create pivot tables and charts in Excel
- Copy-paste into PowerPoint template
- Format slides to match brand guidelines
- Write executive summary narratives
- Email draft to stakeholders for review
- Incorporate feedback and repeat steps 3-7
Time Investment:
10 Full Working Days
That's 80 hours of a £60k-£100k/year engineer's time spent on manual data manipulation instead of building products.
With AI Automation:
30 Minutes
An AI agent collates, analyzes, formats, and generates the entire report—freeing up 79.5 hours for high-value engineering work.
The Hidden Costs of Glue Work
💸 Financial Impact
- • High-salary employees spending 40-60% time on low-value tasks
- • Delayed product launches due to bandwidth constraints
- • Opportunity cost of not focusing on revenue-generating activities
- • Need to hire more people to handle growing glue work load
😤 Human Cost
- • Burnout from repetitive, unrewarding work
- • Decreased job satisfaction and engagement
- • Higher turnover rates among talented employees
- • Reduced creativity and innovation capacity
📉 Competitive Disadvantage
- • Slower time-to-market compared to AI-enabled competitors
- • Inability to scale operations efficiently
- • Missed market opportunities due to bandwidth constraints
- • Reduced ability to adapt to market changes
🎯 Strategic Risk
- • Leadership making decisions based on outdated data
- • Lack of real-time visibility into operations
- • Error-prone manual processes leading to costly mistakes
- • Inability to respond quickly to threats or opportunities
There's a Better Way
We bridge this gap by targeting and automating low-value "glue work" without the need to rebuild your entire workflow.
Our AI-native solutions integrate seamlessly into your existing systems, eliminating bottlenecks and freeing your team to focus on what matters most.