According to a McKinsey study, knowledge workers spend on average nearly 1.8h a day searching for and gathering information. Over a year, that adds up to several weeks of work per person, invisible, but very real.
A hidden cost, but a measurable one
Multiply that time by the number of staff and their loaded hourly cost: document search becomes one of a firm’s most expensive line items, without ever appearing on an invoice.
Why searching takes so long
- Documents are scattered across files, emails and scanned paper archives.
- Keyword search doesn’t understand a question asked in plain language.
- Finding the right version of a contract means opening it and reading it.
What a document AI changes
An AI that can read and cross-reference your documents answers a question in plain language, citing its source to the page. Search time doesn’t disappear entirely, but it drops sharply, exactly what our calculator measures, with a deliberately conservative assumption.
The point isn’t to replace your teams, but to give them back the hours they spend searching instead of producing.