Is your company getting ready to automate some of the work your team does? If so, it’s worth thinking through a few questions to ask before automating a business process.
Automation can take a meaningful amount of work off your team’s plate. It can also improve process consistency and make day-to-day operations less burdensome.
But before automating a workflow, it’s important that the process is understood clearly. These are the questions you should ask first.
1. What outcome are we trying to achieve, and how will we measure it?
It helps to get specific here. What should actually improve once this automation is in place?
That might be response times, fewer missed follow-ups, less time spent performing a specific task, or less back-and-forth between teams.
From there, define how you’ll measure the improvement in concrete terms.
For example:
- Reduce response time on new inquiries from 2 hours to 15 minutes
- Cut RFP turnaround time from 6 days to 2 days
- Cut the time spent on invoice entry by 50%
This gives you a clear way to evaluate whether the automation is doing its job.
2. What does the process actually look like today?
Not the ideal version. The real one your team works through every day.
Talk to the employees who are actually doing the work and write the process out step by step.
If you have SOPs, use them as a reference point, but do not rely on them completely. In many cases, they reflect a simplified version of the workflow and leave out important details that only show up in day-to-day operations.
Those details matter because they show how the process actually works, not just how it is supposed to work.
3. What triggers this process, and when is it complete?
Every workflow has a clear starting point and an endpoint, even if it’s not formally defined.
What kicks this process off? Is it a form submission, an incoming email, a phone call, a new appointment created?
And just as important, how do you know when it’s done?
Is it when a proposal is sent, an invoice is recorded, or a job is scheduled?
Being clear on the start and end points helps ensure the automation runs at the right time and carries through to completion without creating duplicate work or stopping short.
4. Where does this process break down, including edge cases?
Every workflow has a few points where things slow down or need extra attention.
- A form comes in incomplete.
- A customer replies with something unexpected.
- A job changes after it’s already been scheduled.
Some of these happen often. Others show up less frequently but still need to be handled.
Being aware helps you design something that can handle real conditions, not just the most common path.
5. What inputs does this process rely on, and how consistent are they?
Most processes depend on information coming in from different places.
That could be emails, website forms, phone calls, uploaded documents, and so on.
Once you have the complete picture, it’s then important to know whether that information comes in consistently enough to work with.
If it does, automation is more straightforward.
If not, you can either standardize how information is collected, or design the automation to handle variation.
Being clear on this upfront makes a big difference in how reliable the end result feels.
6. What decisions need to be made along the way?
At some point in most workflows, something needs to be decided.
- Where should this request go?
- Is this a new or existing customer?
- Does this need approval before moving forward?
Right now these are probably quick judgments made by a human who understands the context.
When you automate, those same decisions (and responses) need to be clearly defined so the process can continue without disruption.
7. What should happen when something doesn’t go as planned?
There will always be situations that don’t follow the expected path. When a process is handled manually, someone usually catches a mistake and steps in to fix it. With automation, those moments need to be planned for upfront.
For example, if you’re automating the process of responding to RFPs, a real person should review proposals before they are sent.
If your automation is set up to take invoices from an AP inbox and push them into your accounting system, anything incomplete, unfamiliar, or mismatched should be flagged for review rather than pushed through.
In some cases, the fallback might be as simple as retrying a step if something fails. In others, it may mean routing the item to a person for a quick review.
Deciding in advance how to handle these situations keeps the process moving and ensures the automation supports your team without adding extra work.
Final Thoughts
Automation works best when you’re automating a process that is understood and clearly defined. It doesn’t need to be complicated.
Taking a little time upfront to think through these questions to ask before you automate a process will pay back in the long run.
At Big Fish, this is the foundation of how we approach every automation we design.
If you’re considering automation and want help mapping out what it should look like for your business, I’m happy to walk through it with you.
You can schedule a no-charge discovery call with me to get started.
