Business automation: where to start – five steps to your first working automation

Most companies start by comparing tools and booking presentations with vendors. A few weeks later they have a table of features, but still do not know what they actually want to automate.

Take a hypothetical trading company with 70 employees. Salespeople retype orders from emails into the system, an assistant compiles a sales report from three files every Monday, and managers send email reminders about overdue approvals. Each of these tasks is a separate, concrete candidate – and it is the task that determines what tool will be needed.

Set aside half an hour and write down a few repetitive tasks that annoy you. Then ask managers and employees for their lists. It usually turns out that the biggest time-wasters are seen by the people doing the work, not by the board.

For each task, note a few details, as in the table below. You do not need precise measurements – an estimate from the person who does it is enough. You will choose a candidate from this list in the next step.

Choose one task from the list, not three at once. The first automation needs to convince the company that this works – more will follow once it is up and running. A good candidate meets the criteria in the list below.

Simple things usually win: a notification about an email from an important customer, a reminder about an overdue approval, a report sent every Monday or a form instead of paper. The worst first choice is something that changes the daily work of dozens of people at once.

In most mid-sized companies, the first automation does not require buying a new system. Microsoft 365 business plans include Power Automate with standard connectors, so you can build simple flows in Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and Excel without an additional licence.

The same goes for other tools: monday.com has built-in automations, and most CRM systems let you set up reminders and tasks without programming. Just check the limit on automation runs in your plan. The table below will help you choose a starting point.

Separate automation platforms, or software robots that click through programs like a person, become useful later. Turn to them when your existing tools really are not enough.

The first automation does not need a phased schedule and a steering committee. Before you start, measure how long the task takes today – for example, by recording the time for a few cases over a week.

In the first week, build the simplest working version. It may not handle every exception – what matters is that it works for typical cases. In the second week, give it to three or four people, note the problems and make fixes.

After two weeks, compare the time with your baseline. If the effect is clear, roll the automation out to the rest of the team. If not, go back to the list from step 1 – the lesson cost two weeks, not six months.

Once the first automation works, other departments quickly want their own. Without rules, a year later the company has dozens of automations, some of them duplicates, and nobody knows who built them. A few simple rules are enough:

The cost of the first automation has three elements: licences, your people’s time and any outside help. With tools you already have, licences often require no extra payment. The biggest cost is usually the time of the person who describes the process and tests the solution.

Calculate the gain simply: number of people × hours saved per week × number of working weeks × hourly cost. Suppose an automation saves five people an hour a week each. Over 46 working weeks, that is 230 hours a year, and at PLN 70 an hour – about PLN 16,100.

Add to this the benefits that do not show up in hours: fewer mistakes, faster responses to customers, less chasing. Present them to the board separately, without forcing them into a PLN figure.

The same mistakes recur regardless of industry and company size. Most of them can be avoided at the planning stage: