If you are thinking about automating a process, consider the alternative approaches.
These are often quicker in delivering ROI. They also can better prepare the process for automation if you decide to do it in the end.
Eliminate
We often do unnecessary things out of habit. What if, instead of optimizing a task, you could eliminate it?
For example, if you’re thinking of using AI to automatically take notes from your daily meetings, what if you eliminated the meetings?
Simplify
Sometimes processes are unnecessarily complex.
I’ve worked with an agency whose billing process was extremely complex. It led to errors every month.
They wanted to automate it using custom forms and data loaded from various sources. It could work but would be a nightmare to maintain (and therefore costly for the agency). And because of the complexity, the errors would still be frequent.
We decided to simplify the process (and then added a little bit of automation). That made using a spreadsheet a good option again and decreased the number of errors significantly.
Delegate
Should you be the one doing the tasks (for example, invoicing)? Couldn’t an employee do it instead?
If your team is currently doing some time-consuming task, could you outsource it?
Depending on the task, delegation can be easier and faster to apply than automation. Delegating is also a good litmus test for automation. If the delegated task is hard to deliver, it’s either not a good candidate for automation or needs to be described better.
All the options above can bring ROI faster than automation. It’s worth noting that they are not mutually exclusive. You could go through a process, eliminate some parts of it, simplify it, and then delegate it.
Also, doing all the things above leads to better automation because the process is simpler and tested for errors.
Do you have a task in mind that would benefit from one of the listed approaches? Share it in the response. I’d love to see what you came up with!