How do you identify and prioritize the most suitable business processes for automation?

1 Assess your current state

Before you can automate your business processes, you need to understand how they work, who is involved, what are the inputs and outputs, and what are the pain points and opportunities. You can use tools like process mapping, flowcharts, or swimlane diagrams to document and visualize your current state. This will help you identify the gaps, bottlenecks, redundancies, and risks in your processes, and how they affect your business goals and customer needs.

2 Define your automation criteria

When considering automation for business processes, it is important to define criteria based on business objectives, resources, and capabilities. Frequency, volume, complexity, variability, and impact are all important factors to consider. Frequency refers to how often the process occurs, while volume is the number of transactions or cases the process handles. Complexity looks at the number of steps, rules, or exceptions, and variability is the amount the process changes depending on the context or situation. Lastly, impact is the amount the process affects performance, quality, or customer satisfaction.

5 Implement and monitor your automation solutions

Once you have selected your automation tools, you need to implement and monitor them to guarantee they meet your expectations and requirements. Utilizing tools such as project management, change management, or testing and validation can help you plan, execute, and evaluate your automation projects. To ensure success, you should define your scope, objectives, and deliverables, assign roles and responsibilities, communicate and train your stakeholders, test and validate your automation solutions, monitor and measure your performance and results, and review and improve your automation solutions.

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?