Deciding what to automate gets much easier when you can see the value before anyone writes code. You don’t need a spreadsheet model for this. You need a starting figure that the people doing the job agree is honest.
Four questions get you most of the way. How long does it take? How often does it happen? What goes wrong, and what does fixing it cost? And what isn’t getting done while this is?
#Write down the before
Frequency, average time, how many people touch it, how many times it changes hands, how often it has to be redone. Measure the same things a month after it goes live. The gap tells you whether to extend it, adjust it or admit it wasn’t worth doing.
#Count the things that aren’t hours
Some of the best outcomes never show up on a timesheet. Replying to a lead in an hour instead of a day. Follow-ups that stop slipping. Customers getting the same answer twice in a row. A specialist who gets through an afternoon without being interrupted.
The measure worth having is one your team notices while doing the job, not one that only appears in a quarterly review.
Track it as the work changes and automation stops being a technology project you did once. It becomes something the business gets better at.
Recognise any of this in your own business? Tell us about it and we’ll say whether it’s worth automating.
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