Automating a process: choosing your first task

Automating means handing the repetitive steps of a process to software: copying information from one tool to another, sorting requests, generating documents, following up with a customer. Well chosen, a first automation frees up time and wins over the whole team. Badly chosen, it complicates everything. Here is how to choose well.

Spot the candidate tasks

Ask your teams: "Which task annoys you because it is repetitive?" The best candidates share three traits: they follow understandable rules, they come back often, and they involve several tools that do not talk to each other.

Map before you automate

Describe the task step by step, as if explaining it to a new colleague: where the information comes from, who handles it, where the result goes. This mapping often reveals pointless steps. It is better to remove them than to automate them.

Where AI adds something more

A classic automation follows fixed rules. AI can handle what does not fit into boxes:

• reading a freely written document or email and extracting the essentials;
• classifying a request by topic or urgency;
• suggesting a draft reply or report;
• spotting an anomaly in a series of data.

Plan a human check

For steps that commit your company (a payment, a reply to a customer, a decision), add a human check, at least at the start. You can lighten it as trust builds and results are confirmed.

Measure the gain

Before you begin, note the time spent and the number of errors. Measure again after a few weeks. This simple before-and-after is enough to decide whether to extend automation to other tasks.

Going further

Discover how we design intelligent automation with human supervision, or write to us to review one of your processes.