Obtainr

What 33 document chases actually looked like

Read the sample size first: n=33 jobs, from one organisation, over three weeks. That is far too small to generalise from, and we'd rather say so at the top than in a footnote. It is published because real numbers with a stated sample beat invented ones with a confident percentage.

The numbers

MeasureValueWhat it means
Chase jobs created33Every job in the production database
Completed11Requirements met and the job closed
Completed with every requirement satisfied11 of 11No job was closed with an outstanding requirement
Documents received via upload portal17Files sent by recipients with no account
Chase emails sent27Across all jobs, including follow-ups
Jobs never sent14 (42%)Set up but abandoned before the first email

The finding we didn't expect

42% of chases were created and never sent. The drop-off isn't in the chasing — it's in the setup, before a single email goes out. On a small sample this is a hint rather than a result, but it points somewhere useful: the effort of specifying a request precisely enough to be checkable is itself a barrier, and the tool that removes the chasing has to not replace it with a form.

Why 11 of 11 is written that way

It would be easy to write “100% requirement satisfaction”. We don't, because a percentage derived from eleven observations implies a precision that isn't there. Eleven out of eleven is the honest form of the same fact, and it tells you the denominator without making you hunt for it.

Method

Figures are counted directly from Obtainr's production database on 30 July 2026 — every job record, not a sample of them. “Requirement satisfied” means each requirement attached to a job was marked satisfied by the reply-checking step. Jobs from internal test accounts are included; there is no separate cohort, because there is not yet enough usage to have one.

Using these figures? Please cite them as Obtainr's own production data with the n=33 sample size attached. They will be updated as usage grows, and the date above will change with them.

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