How to get automating manual work right
It comes up on almost every project, usually later than it should. The short answer to automating manual work is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.
Why it matters
Automate the boring and repeatable, not the judgement calls. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Document the process before you automate it
- Half-automated processes can be worse than manual ones
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Half-automated processes can be worse than manual ones. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
Where to go from here
The short version
Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Three things worth confirming about automating manual work before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Half-automated processes can be worse than manual ones — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.