Not every spreadsheet or manual task warrants automation. The strongest candidates combine meaningful recurring effort, repeatable rules, fragmented systems, and a clear boundary between work that can be automated and judgment that should remain human.

The six questions

1 How often does the process run?

Is it daily, weekly, monthly, or triggered by each transaction, customer or project?

Look for work that repeats predictably and becomes more demanding as the company grows. One-time analyses and frequently changing processes are usually weaker candidates.

2 How much effort does each cycle require?

Identify every role involved, including preparation, review, follow-up and correction.

Use total person-hours, not elapsed time. Include recurring rework, but separate it from time already counted elsewhere.

3 Which systems and handoffs does it touch?

Map where the information begins, where it moves, and where the final output is produced.

Strong candidates often involve exports, spreadsheets, email requests, copied data, or repeated movement between operational and accounting systems.

4 Where do exceptions and controls enter?

Separate the repeatable steps from the decisions that require experience or approval.

The objective is not to remove human oversight. It is to automate collection, matching, routing and routine checks so people can focus on exceptions, judgment and sign-off.

5 What happens when the process is late or wrong?

Measure the operational consequence, not merely the inconvenience.

Consider delayed reporting, slower collections, avoidable rework, control exposure, missed decisions, and the need to add team capacity as volume increases.

6 What sits immediately upstream and downstream?

Ask what must happen before this process starts, and what happens after it finishes.

A strong opportunity rarely stands alone. Redesigning one workflow may reveal adjacent opportunities across reporting, reconciliations, planning, working capital and exception management.

What a strong candidate looks like

A workflow deserves deeper assessment when it is:

• Recurring and measurable
• Material in total person-hours
• Spread across multiple systems or people
• Governed by repeatable rules
• Burdened by manual exceptions or follow-up
• Able to preserve appropriate human review
• Connected to additional workflows

The output should be a prioritised implementation portfolio, not a collection of isolated automations.