Which tasks should you automate first?
My advice to everyone: do not start with what looks most impressive. Start with the most boring stuff, the things that happen most often and are the most predictable. The task that frees up the most time is almost never the coolest one. It is usually the one nobody bothers to mention.
Boring beats advanced
The best candidate is a task someone does the exact same way, again and again. The more predictable it is, the easier it is to automate, and the faster it pays for itself.
It is often things like copying data between systems, sending the same emails by hand, putting reports together, or entering the same information in several places.
Three questions that find the winners
Ask these three questions about a task:
- Do we do this more than once a week?
- Does the task follow fixed rules?
- Do mistakes happen when someone is short on time?
If you answer yes to all three, the task is ready to automate.
Tasks that need a lot of judgement and have few fixed rules are harder. They can wait. Not because they are impossible, but because they give you less back right now.
Prioritise by hours, not gut feeling
Write the tasks down, estimate how many hours each one takes a week, and sort by that. The top of the list is where you begin.
It sounds obvious. Still, few people do it. Most automate whatever they happened to think of last, not what actually costs them the most.
Start small, show it works, build from there
You do not need a big project to get going. One well-chosen automation that saves a few hours a week gives you both the trust and the budget to take the next step.
This is exactly the prioritising a survey does for you. It puts the tasks in order of what is worth doing first, so you start safely and in the right place.
Want to know where your own easy wins are?
A survey shows you exactly what is worth automating in your business, what it costs and what it saves, before you spend a single krone building anything. The first call is free and no-obligation.
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