Before you automate: five questions to ask first
Automation pays off when the process is stable, frequent and well understood. Five questions tell you whether yours is.
Most automation projects that disappoint were not badly built. They automated the wrong thing, or the right thing too early. Before you commission a workflow, a bot or an AI agent, answer these five questions honestly.
1. How often does this happen, and how long does it take?
Multiply the number of times the task happens per month by the minutes it takes. A task that takes 10 minutes and happens 20 times a month is about 3 hours of work. Automating it may cost more than it saves for years. A task that takes 5 minutes but happens 400 times a month is over 30 hours, and that is usually worth a closer look.
2. Is the process the same every time?
Automation follows rules. If the people doing the work today make a judgement call on most cases, the automation will either get those cases wrong or hand them back to a person. Write down the steps. If you can't write them down without "it depends", fix the process first.
3. Where does the data come from, and is it clean?
Most automations move data between systems: an email into a CRM, an invoice into accounting software. If the source data is inconsistent, with missing fields, free-text amounts or scanned PDFs, a large part of the project budget will go into cleaning it. Find that out before you get a quote, not after.
4. What happens when it fails?
Every automation fails eventually: an API changes, a supplier sends a new invoice format, a password expires. Decide who will notice, how quickly, and what they will do. If nobody owns the automation after launch, it will quietly stop working and the manual process will come back without anyone deciding it should.
5. Would a simpler change do the job?
Sometimes the best answer is not automation at all. Removing an approval step, merging two spreadsheets or using a feature your current software already has can deliver most of the benefit at a fraction of the cost. It is worth checking before you build anything.
What to do next
If you have answers to all five questions, you are ready to compare options and get quotes. If two or more are unclear, start with a short process review. It costs far less than an automation that nobody uses.