For example, both managers would spend a lot of their time recording, retrieving, systematizing and updating pricing information gathered from the company’s nearest competitors. These data were important for the company since this allowed them to price their products according to the current market situation. This updating of prices involved, however, many countries with many individual pricing lists being gathered from many different competitors. This often meant that the two managers together with other marketing personnel were carrying out uncoordinated, duplicative work. That is, data were at times registered twice. Considering the quite time-consuming work load for this data storage activity, the company would incur many hidden costs pertaining to this operational task. The COO of the company estimated that the costs of these unnecessary activities were the equivalent of payroll costs for two full-time marketing employees