The automation audit: find the process that quietly costs you a week
Before you automate anything, find the workflow eating the most hours for the least reason.
The best automation project is not the flashiest — it is the one that removes the most dull, repeated work. Before writing a line of code, do the audit: find where your team hours actually go.
How to spot the candidate
- It repeats on a predictable schedule (daily, per order, per ticket)
- It moves data between tools by hand — copy, paste, re-key
- It has clear rules, even if nobody wrote them down
- Getting it wrong is annoying but recoverable
AI where judgment is needed, plain code where it is not
Not every step needs a model. Route approvals, sync records, and generate documents with reliable code; reserve AI for the parts that need reading, summarising, or deciding. Mixing the two — with fallbacks and monitoring — is what makes an automation you can trust at 2am.