Which process should you automate first?

Start with one process, not a platform

Most teams know something is slow. The hard part is choosing where to start. A first project that tries to fix everything tends to fix nothing, so pick one process that happens often and that people already complain about.

Four signs a process is ready

A good first candidate usually shows all four:

• It happens every day or every week, not once a quarter.
• It follows the same steps each time.
• Someone moves information by hand between two places, such as from an email into a spreadsheet.
• Mistakes are costly, or slow to catch.

Score it in ten minutes

For each candidate, write down four numbers: how often it happens in a month, how many minutes it takes each time, how many people touch it, and what a mistake costs.

Frequency times minutes gives the hours it takes each month. A worked example: an invoice typed in 200 times a month at four minutes each is more than thirteen hours a month, before anyone fixes a typo.

What to leave for later

Some processes make poor first projects, even when they are painful:

• Processes whose rules change every month.
• Work that needs a fresh judgement every time.
• Anything whose steps nobody can write down yet.

Keep a person in control

The first version should prepare the work and let a person approve it. Once it has proved itself on real cases for a few weeks, widen what it does on its own.

What to bring to the first conversation

The process you picked, your four numbers, and a few real examples: twenty invoices, messages or forms is enough. That is all we need to say whether it is worth doing and what the first step is.