Begin your digital transformation journey

X Prerequisites to Automation

Documentation
Before you can get started with anything, you need to document your business processes exactly as they are now. Check out the Process Documentation Toolkit

Staff Support
Ultimately it will be very difficult to foist automation onto an unwilling staff. Ensure that your staff understands the benefits of automation. Be ready for pushback; not everyone will be on board. There will be concerns that automation will lead to layoffs. Potential questions and responses

Digitize Paper Processes
I’m going to urge you to consider digitizing any paper processes. Digitizing these processes will open them up as candidates for automation. Tools to digitizing paper processes: Adobe Acrobat Pro, Docusign, Microsoft Forms,

Automation Candidates
Ideally, you are here because you already have a few processes or tasks in mind that you would like to see automated. Go through all your processes and identify more. This will be your pipeline.

Evaluate Candidates
Low hanging fruit, etc Update Process Documentation Toolkit to include evaluation materials like ROI calculator and some sort of evaluation matrix. In cases where you are considering purchasing a tool, you might not know the exact ROI.

Bucket Candidates
This step is often overlooked. Of all your potential areas for automation, are there any that are similar? E.g. data entry from one system into another system (Excel into Salesforce). Paper forms that could be online forms. Automatic routing of emails or documents. Compiling data from multiple Excel files into one report. Bucketing similar candidates will help back up your cost/benefit analysis if you ultimately decide to purchase an automation tool.

Prioritize Projects
Decide which you want to do first. Oftentimes staff sentiment or pressure from management will dictate which are the highest priorities. You can use ROI as well. If you are considering purchasing an automation tool, review your buckets to see which tool will help knock out the biggest bucket or the highest combined ROI for the bucket.

Establish a Budget

Research Automation Tools

Recommended Automation Tools

Plan Your Implementation

Contact me for consulting or contracting to help get you started.