Guide
Where to start with business process automation
Almost every company can name ten things it would like automated. The ones that succeed pick one, finish it, and let it pay for the next.
What makes a good first candidate
A good first process has four properties. Miss one and it is a second project, not a first.
- It happens often: daily or weekly, not once a quarter
- It follows a rule a person could write down
- Its inputs already exist digitally somewhere
- A mistake in it costs money or a customer
Estimate the payback honestly
Count the hours a month the process takes, across everyone who touches it, including the time spent finding and fixing its mistakes. Then halve your estimate of the saving, because no automation removes every exception. If the project still pays back within a year or so, it is a sound first project.
What to leave alone
Do not automate a process nobody can describe. Automation makes a process faster, and a confused process faster is still confused. Fix the process on paper first.
Do not automate judgement. Approving a discount, handling an upset customer, deciding whom to promote: software should put the facts in front of the person deciding, not decide.
Common first projects
These come up again and again because they meet all four tests.
- Attendance flowing from the machine into payroll
- Generating payslips, quotations or invoices from existing data
- Approvals that route to the right person with a reminder
- Moving data between two systems instead of retyping it
- A daily list of what is overdue, built automatically
Questions
Common questions
Do we need to replace our software to automate?
Usually not. Most automation connects the systems you already have. If a system offers an API, a database or a regular export, it can normally take part.
Will automation cost jobs?
In a growing company it mostly removes the dullest part of existing jobs. People stop copying data and start handling the exceptions that need them.
How do we keep control of an automated process?
Insist on a history: what the system did, when and by which rule. An automation you cannot inspect is one you cannot trust.
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