Which Business Processes Should You Automate First?
When determining which business processes to automate, you might feel lost. While there are an abundance of ideas online (and many more if you ask ChatGPT), narrowing down which processes to start with is the hard part.
Before automating any processes, there are a number of questions that need to be answered, including:
- How much time is spent completing the process?
- What do your data inputs look like?
- How many resources are performing the process?
- Are your decisions rule-based or subjective?
- How many steps are in the process?
If you have a process in mind, we can help with the calculations to determine whether it’s a process worth automating. Try our RPA calculator to determine the average time saved, complexity, and automation score of your process.
If you don’t have a specific process in mind, but more like a handful of ideas, this is where you’ll want to call in the experts.
We’ve noticed in talking to clients that they often choose processes that would have immediate results, known as low-hanging fruit, but those aren’t always the best processes to start with. There might be a different process that, when automated, will make a greater impact on more users or systems.
So, where do you start?
That’s a good question. We suggest doing a Snorkel Dive!
What’s a Snorkel Dive?
Other than a fun activity to do on vacation, a Snorkel Dive (in automation-terms) is a series of workshops with our team of experts.
First, we walk your business unit(s) and IT team through an RPA 101 session – getting your teams up to par on the art of the possible.
After that, we hold high-level discovery sessions to understand the basic details of your processes, including pain points, reason for automation, volumetrics, and the value of automation for that process. Based on that information, our team identifies and qualifies automation candidates, as well as assesses your current state automation infrastructure.
Once we’ve completed all the discovery sessions, we would provide you with a recommendation (or a list) of potential automation candidates that are worth looking into further.
After a Snorkel Dive, we might suggest doing a Deep Dive to look into the automation candidates further.
If you need help identifying potential automation candidates, reach out to our team to learn more!
