What should you automate first?
Automate the process that is frequent, boring and well understood — not the one that is most annoying. Frequency and clarity beat pain.
The test
Score each candidate process on four things:
| Score it on | Best answer |
|---|---|
| Frequency | Daily or several times a week |
| Consistency | The same steps every time |
| How well you can describe it | You could write it down in ten minutes |
| What it needs to touch | One or two systems, no legal sensitivity |
High on all four is your first project. High on frequency but low on consistency usually means the process itself needs fixing first — automating it would just make the mess faster.
The usual candidates, in order
- Follow-up on enquiries. Rarely a technology question — usually the highest-return fix in a small business.
- Document handling. Intake forms, quotes, invoices, contracts. Repetitive, rules-based, well suited.
- Scheduling and reminders. High frequency, low complexity, immediate relief for front-desk time.
- Reporting. Assembling the same numbers weekly by hand.
- First-draft writing. Proposals, replies, summaries — always with a human editing pass.
What to leave alone
- Anything involving a judgement about a person. Keep a human in the decision; in many jurisdictions this is a legal requirement as well as the right call.
- Rare, high-stakes work. If it happens twice a year, the automation will never pay for itself.
- Processes you are about to change anyway. Automate the version you intend to keep.