David Carneal

David Carneal

David Carneal is the Principal and Head Consultant at the Digital Efficiency Consulting Group. With over 20 years in process efficiency, change management and workflow development he has help companies elevate wasted time and grow profitability with ease.

About

David Carneal is the Founder and Principal of Digital Efficiency Consulting Group (DECG), where he helps organizations turn messy operations into systems that actually work. He specializes in process optimization, workflow redesign, and practical digital transformation for small-to-mid-sized businesses across manufacturing, distribution, professional services, and healthcare-adjacent industries.

With a career spanning operations, technology implementation, and business process improvement, Carneal is known for a simple philosophy: small improvements create real change. Rather than pursuing disruptive overhauls that stall out in planning documents, he focuses on identifying friction points inside everyday workflows, quantifying their real business impact, and delivering execution-ready roadmaps that teams can use immediately.

Before founding DECG, Carneal worked closely with executive teams, operations leaders, and frontline staff to diagnose bottlenecks in order management, production flow, customer onboarding, data handling, and cross-department handoffs. This hands-on experience shaped his practical approach. He does not sell theory. He builds clarity, priorities, and momentum.

Carneal is also deeply involved in developing structured consulting methodologies and reusable client tools, including operational assessments, efficiency scorecards, KPI frameworks, and implementation playbooks designed to help organizations sustain improvements long after an engagement ends. His firm’s deliverables emphasize transparency, documentation, and decision-ready insights that leadership teams can trust.

He is based in Southern California and works with clients across the United States.

Focus Areas

  • Skilled Problem Solver
  • Expert in Cost Reduction & Process Improvement
  • Process Management
  • Workflow Modernization
  • Business Process Evaluation
  • Modern Workplace Transformation
  • Operational Bottleneck Assessment

Specialties

Process DevelopmentChange ManagementCollaborative StrategyData Analysis

Latest Posts

Bottlenecks and Approvals: The Slowest Two-Step

Most teams don’t have an execution problem. They have a waiting problem. Work piles up behind one team, one person, or one “special process.” Then approvals show up to finish the job: decisions die in inboxes, and “quick sign-off” becomes a two-week vacation.

The Four Boring Moves That Make Office Automation Actually Work

Automation works when it’s boring: standardize intake, validate inputs, route work to the right owner, and send weird cases to an exception queue. Here’s a simple way to spot and pilot a workflow that won’t turn your team into bot babysitters.

Ownership Leaks: When “Shared” Means “Nobody”

“Shared ownership” sounds collaborative. In practice, it often means work ricochets between teams until the deadline shows up and somebody takes an emergency bite out of it. Ownership leaks are expensive because they create invisible delays.

IBM’s 1990s Wake-Up Call: When Efficiency Wasn’t Optional

IBM didn’t survive the early 1990s by holding more meetings or printing a prettier strategy deck. It survived by confronting ugly numbers, cutting through internal drag, and re-engineering how work actually flowed. This article breaks down the stakes IBM faced, the efficiency moves that mattered, and the hard operational questions most companies avoid. If your business is stuck in “busy” mode, this is your wake-up call, minus the multi-billion-dollar loss.

Big Plans Don’t Fail. Friction Wins.

Most strategies don’t fail in a dramatic explosion. They fail the way a shopping cart fails: one wobbly wheel, a squeaky hinge, and suddenly you’re steering with your whole body. If you’re a department leader, you’ve seen it.

All Posts by David Carneal

Are You Really Leveraging Efficiency — or Just Talking About It?

Efficiency isn’t just about cutting costs—it’s about removing friction from the way work actually gets done. Small changes like simplifying a screen, reducing clicks, or automating a manual step can unlock 20–40% productivity gains and higher margins. The right improvements don’t just save time—they change how your team feels about their work.

Your Customer Experience: Are You Listening, Acting, and Celebrating?

Over the past few posts, we’ve explored what it takes to truly elevate your customer experience: Customer Experience Matters – Are you delivering a service, or an experience? Happy, engaged customers are willing to pay more, return more, and advocate for your brand. Companies that lead in CX outperform competitors by up to 80%.

Survey Smart: Crafting Your Feedback Strategy with Purpose

We’ve talked about why you should go after customer feedback — now let’s focus on how to do it well. Because simply sending out a survey isn’t enough. The design, timing, and integration matter. So if you’re waiting for feedback to come in naturally, you’re hearing from only a tiny fraction of your customers — and likely missing the larger signal.

Are You Chasing Customer Feedback — or Waiting for It to Come to You?

When was the last time you asked a customer how they felt — right after they interacted with your product, signed up, or completed a service? Or are you mostly relying on the phone to ring, the email to land, the complaint to show up? Here’s the problem: most unhappy customers will never complain — they’ll just quietly leave. According to one source, 91% of unhappy customers never complain, they simply go away. superoffice.com+2Market Connections+2 Another statistic: for every one customer who voices a complaint, there are about 26 others who say nothing.

What Does Customer Experience Really Mean to You?

Are you simply providing a service to your customers — or are you creating an experience that makes them feel heard, appreciated, and valued? Today’s customers expect more than just a transaction. In fact, 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience (according to PwC). And yet, many companies still focus on operations, metrics, and quarterly goals… rather than the feeling they leave their customers with.

Sell the Distractions: Portfolio Focus Without the Drama

Side quests feel exciting until they eat your margins and your attention. LEGO recovered by cutting distractions and protecting the core operation that actually paid the bills. Use a Distraction Disposal checklist and a simple sunset script to reduce tool sprawl, exceptions, and portfolio clutter.

What Can We Stop Doing? The Turnaround Question That Works

The fastest path to relief isn’t adding more work, it’s stopping the right work. LEGO’s turnaround started with one simple question: what can we stop doing? Steal a 30-minute Stop-Doing Huddle agenda to cut low-value reports, meetings, and approvals and protect the time you reclaim.

Learn more about DECG →