Most owners who call about automation start with the tool. Which software, which AI, how much. It is a natural place to start, and it is almost always the wrong one. The better start is a handful of plain questions about the work itself. Answering them takes about an hour, and it usually shows where the real opportunity is.
1. What is repeated every week?
Look for the task that follows the same steps each time: typing invoice lines, copying figures between systems, building the same report, chasing the same approvals. Repetition is the signature of work a tool can take over.
2. Who does it, and what are they not doing instead?
The cost of a manual task is rarely the hours alone. It is what the person would be doing with those hours. If your most capable administrator spends Friday typing, the real price is the follow-up, the problem-spotting and the customer calls that did not happen.
3. What happens when it goes wrong?
A mistake in a price, a date or a quantity can be small and cheap, or it can be a missed deadline and an unhappy customer. The higher the cost of a mistake, the more the process needs a clear checking step, whether or not it is automated.
4. Where does the information come from?
Documents, emails, forms, another system, someone’s head. A tool is easiest to build when the input arrives in a predictable form, such as a PDF or a form. It is harder when the key rules have never been written down, and that is worth knowing before anything is built.
5. Who has the final say?
Decide in advance which decisions must always have a person’s name on them. Good automation does the preparation and flags the exceptions. A person approves. That keeps the speed without giving up control.
What to do with your answers
Write the five answers down for two or three tasks. One will stand out: frequent, annoying, and costly when it goes wrong. That is the one to look at first. It also makes any later conversation with a developer, including us, far shorter and cheaper, because you already know what you need.
It also helps to involve the person who does the task. They know the exceptions, the workarounds and the unwritten rules, and they are usually the best judge of whether a new process actually works. A tool built without their input tends to solve the problem on paper and miss it in practice.
Which task in your business would you put through these five questions first?
HME Solutions builds custom tools like this for small businesses. See our automation services, how we work, or get in touch.
Frequently asked questions
What should a small business automate first?
The task that is frequent, annoying and costly when it goes wrong. Write down the five answers for two or three tasks and one will stand out.
Who should be involved when choosing what to automate?
The person who does the task. They know the exceptions and unwritten rules, and are the best judge of whether a new process works.