How can you prioritize processes for automation?

1 Identify your goals

The first step is to define your business goals and objectives, and how automation can help you achieve them. For example, you may want to automate processes that can reduce errors, speed up delivery, increase revenue, or improve compliance. You should also consider the impact of automation on your customers, employees, and stakeholders, and how it aligns with your vision and values.

2 Assess your current state

The next step is to analyze your current processes and identify the ones that are suitable for automation. You can use tools such as process maps, flowcharts, or diagrams to document the steps, inputs, outputs, roles, and resources involved in each process. You should also measure the performance, quality, and costs of each process, and identify the pain points, bottlenecks, or inefficiencies that automation can solve.

3 Evaluate your automation potential

The third step is to evaluate the automation potential of each process, based on criteria such as complexity, frequency, volume, variability, and standardization. Generally, processes that are simple, repetitive, high-volume, low-variability, and well-defined are easier and more beneficial to automate than processes that are complex, infrequent, low-volume, high-variability, and ambiguous. You can use a scoring system or a matrix to rank the processes according to their automation potential.

4 Consider your feasibility and readiness

The fourth step is to consider the feasibility and readiness of each process for automation, based on factors such as technical compatibility, data availability, security, compliance, and change management. You should assess whether you have the right technology, data, and infrastructure to automate the process, and whether there are any legal, ethical, or social implications or risks involved. You should also evaluate whether your organization and your employees are ready and willing to adopt the change and embrace the new way of working.

5 Prioritize your automation opportunities

The final step is to prioritize your automation opportunities, based on the value and the effort required to automate each process. You can use a framework such as the Pareto principle, the Eisenhower matrix, or the MoSCoW method to categorize the processes into different levels of priority. For example, you may want to focus on the processes that have the highest value and the lowest effort first, and then move on to the processes that have the highest value and the highest effort. You should also consider the dependencies, interdependencies, and synergies between the processes, and how they affect your overall automation strategy.

By following these steps, you can prioritize your processes for automation in a systematic and strategic way, and maximize the benefits and outcomes of your automation initiatives.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?