To be honest the applications should be split into 2 piles.
1 Pile of applications which have absolutely No technicalities at all, the most straight forward cases in the world to process, applications from known countries, like UK, some good places of Europe. These cases would be so easy to process that if the agent reading the application could have it completed within a week and you can have you're PR status...
The other applications pile should include people applying for poor/middle eastern counties, people who have children, how have been married before or who's application will be red flagged straight away for many reasons because its the people and applications like these which are slowing up the whole process for us people who have a normal, clean, easy and perfect application.
From the moment the applications on the desk of the person checking it shouldn't take long to process, he reads it and checks the application, makes sure its a real relationship etc then process it its because of the most complicated cases that delays everyone's