Does automation mean AI?

Usually not. Most of the work is routine: reading a file, doing arithmetic, producing an output on a schedule. AI is worth adding where a step involves reading or writing language, and it's worth leaving out where the answer needs to be exactly right every time.

What happens when the process changes?

The automation has to change with it, and that should be a small job rather than a rebuild. It's worth asking how a change gets made before anything is built, because the answer varies a lot.

Can I automate something that lives in my accounting software?

Often, and it depends on whether that software will let anything else talk to it. That's the first thing to check, and it's a five-minute question rather than a project.

What if it gets something wrong?

Then you want to find out from a draft rather than from a customer. Anything that produces something a person sends should produce a draft on the first run, and stay that way until it has earned otherwise.

Which part of my week should I automate first?

Start with the job that's repeated, boring and done the same way every time, because that's the kind a machine can follow without guessing.

Most businesses have several jobs that get rebuilt from scratch on a schedule. A report, a calendar, a price sheet, a list copied from one system into another. None of them is in anybody's job description, and each one takes an evening a month from somebody.

The first one to automate is the one that scores highest on the four things below.

What Makes a Job Worth Automating

Run every candidate against these four. A job that fails any of them is usually the wrong first project, however annoying it is.

It repeats on a schedule Weekly, monthly, every time an order comes in. A job you do twice a year isn't worth the setup, however tedious it is.
It's done the same way every time If there's judgment in the middle, the automation can do the parts either side and hand you the decision. What it can't do is guess.
The inputs already exist somewhere A schedule in a file, records in a system, a folder of photographs. If somebody has to type the inputs in first, you have moved the work rather than removed it.
A mistake that's easy to spot and cheap to fix Start where a mistake is obvious and cheap: a wall calendar, a report, a draft email. Leave payroll, invoicing and anything that touches a bank account for later.

The Arithmetic That Picks the First Job

Take the job. Write down how long it takes and how often it happens. Multiply it out for a year. That's the number the automation is competing with, and it's usually larger than people guess because the monthly ones hide.

Then do it again for every other job on the list. The point is rarely the first one on its own. It's what the whole list adds up to, which is usually more of the year than anybody expected to be spending on work nobody was hired to do.

Add Up Your Own List

The rows start with sample jobs and sample times. Type over them with yours.

Name of job 1
Hours each time for job 1 How often for job 1 78 hours a year
Name of job 2
Hours each time for job 2 How often for job 2 36 hours a year
Name of job 3
Hours each time for job 3 How often for job 3 8 hours a year
Name of job 4
Hours each time for job 4 How often for job 4 26 hours a year

The whole list 148 hours a year about 19 working days

A year counts 260 weekdays and 52 weeks, and a working day is eight hours.

What to Do Before You Buy Anything

Write the job down as steps, in the order somebody does them, including the part where they check something. Most automation projects that go wrong were scoped from a description of the job rather than from the job.

The writing-down is also the test. If you can't get it onto a page as a list of steps, there's judgment in there that hasn't been made explicit yet, and that's the thing to work out first.

What a Good Automation Feels Like Afterward

It should run without anybody having to remember to start it. If the automation needs somebody to press a button on the first of the month, you have swapped a two-hour job for a two-minute job plus a reminder, which is better but not what you paid for.

The other half is that the outputs come from one place. When a schedule changes in the source, everything downstream is rebuilt from that change, so the person who used to rebuild it by hand only has to check it.

Common Questions

Does automation mean AI?: Usually not. Most of the work is routine: reading a file, doing arithmetic, producing an output on a schedule. AI is worth adding where a step involves reading or writing language, and it's worth leaving out where the answer needs to be exactly right every time.
What happens when the process changes?: The automation has to change with it, and that should be a small job rather than a rebuild. It's worth asking how a change gets made before anything is built, because the answer varies a lot.
Can I automate something that lives in my accounting software?: Often, and it depends on whether that software will let anything else talk to it. That's the first thing to check, and it's a five-minute question rather than a project.
What if it gets something wrong?: Then you want to find out from a draft rather than from a customer. Anything that produces something a person sends should produce a draft on the first run, and stay that way until it has earned otherwise.

Want help finding yours?

Tell us what your business does in a week and which part of it is done by hand. That's the whole conversation, and it's the same one every one of these starts with.

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