"There has to be a better way."
We've all whispered this under our breath mid-task, knowing full well we're going to have to do the exact same thing again on Friday. You're moving data between spreadsheets and somewhere along the way you realise you've made a mistake and need to undo the last 20 minutes of work.
After a short groan and a curse word or two, you get back to it - because what's the alternative? The work still needs to get done.
And it's not just the spreadsheets. This morning you had to chase down an invoice that got missed last week, manually send onboarding instructions to a new client and sort out system access for two new team members. None of it was difficult but all of it took longer than it should have.
This is the unglamorous reality of running a business. Not every hour is spent on strategy, growth or networking at the golf club. Instead a surprising amount of time is spent on tasks that are repetitive, manual and let's face it, a little soul-destroying.
Allow me to introduce you to business process automation These are tools designed to take away these problems by connecting your systems together and allowing data to flow between them. They excel at routine, repetitive tasks where the output is usually one variation of another. for example when sending emails, creating documents, onboarding clients or compiling reports.
The results can be transformational. Time that was spent on admin gets redirected to high-value work, mistakes start to disappear and that Friday task you’ve been dreading now happens on its own.
But business process automation tools require some set-up and a little technical know-how, so knowing where to start makes all the difference.
In this article, I walk you through how to identify which of your manual processes are the best candidates for automation, what to consider before you get started and common traps to avoid when looking to automate repetitive tasks.
The difference between an automation that saves you hours and an automation that creates more challenges usually comes down to whether the process was a suitable candidate in the first place.
Here’s a handy checklist to work out if yours is a good fit.
A 5 minute task twice a day quickly adds up over the course of a month or a year. What could you do with an extra few hours?
You know exactly what needs to happen given a set of inputs. For example, if the client is based in the UK, send them the UK prices, otherwise send them the international ones.
Your operations manager shouldn’t be spending their time compiling status reports if it costs you £75 in equivalent hourly rate.
Manual tasks will always introduce mistakes thanks to our good old friend human error, whereas automations only produce errors when they’re told to.
The total cost of implementing and maintaining the automation needs to be less than the benefits you’re getting from it. You can calculate the benefit by assessing how much you’re saving in resource time and what you could be doing with that time instead (the opportunity cost).
Ultimately if you’re thinking of introducing process automation, you need to ask yourself two questions. How much is it costing you to do that task manually and is it more than the cost of fixing it?
Knowing when not to automate is just as important as knowing which processes make good automation candidates. Here are some red flags to look out for.
There are AI and automation gurus who will claim that you can replace your entire workforce with bots and automations tools. Fundamentally, their messaging that automation is a force multiplier is correct, but what’s often left out is the overheads that are introduced and what good automation really looks like.
So let’s do some myth-busting.
“I can automate most of my processes in one big automation”
Whilst visually impressive, long automations are more likely to break as a failure upstream can prevent downstream tasks from running. This can be mitigated with proper error handling, although complexity scales with length as you need to understand the different ways in which the automation can fail.
All of this increases maintenance overheads and makes it difficult for someone to stabilise a shaky solution. In general, shorter automations that complete a specific task are easier to manage and can still be connected to other bite-sized automations. The concept of modularity is important here: build once and reuse multiple times.
“I can implement once and reap the benefits”
Although reliable if designed well, automations do require ongoing maintenance to keep them healthy. APIs can fall out of date, inputs change and your requirements will grow as your business evolves.
It’s also likely the number of edge cases will increase with the complexity of your processes, so you’ll need someone to act as a dedicated support engineer to maintain and refine your automations over time. This doesn’t have to be a full-time role, but you’ll be grateful you have someone to pick up the pieces if an automation fails at a critical time.
“I can replace my whole team if I automate their work”
One of the wonderful benefits of automation is the ability to free up your team to focus on higher value work. You may find you need fewer people handling admin, but as I touched on above, you’ll still need to invest in ongoing support to maintain your automations and improve them as your requirements grow.
“I can implement automations without defining my processes”
We’ve mostly covered this one so the key thing to know is that attempting to automate a poorly defined process usually means it will fail when edge cases crop up or you start seeing unexpected results. Think emails to incorrect recipients or a mislabelled contract sent to a client!
The right business process automation tool is the one you find easy to use. If you’re handy with a bit of scripting and familiar with APIs, go for the more flexible and powerful options.
For total beginners opt for tools that have large integration libraries and offer the most out-of-the-box connectors with your favourite tools. After all, their power comes from being able to automate tasks as quickly and easily as possible.
What about cost? Tools like Make and Zapier use consumption-based pricing where you pay for a monthly allowance of tasks and scale up as you grow. Solutions like Microsoft Power Automate charge per user instead, which works out better if your team is smaller but your automation volume is high.
And on the note of Power Automate, are you exclusively bought into Microsoft products or are you scattered across different software providers?
If you’re unsure, don’t feel like you have to figure these out on your own.