Which workflow is worth improving?
Use this worksheet to turn an automation idea into a practical conversation. Complete it for one workflow, then compare it with the other work competing for your team’s attention.
Fill in the fields, then print or save a PDF. Your answers stay in this page; they are not submitted or saved. No email address is required.
Manual effort
How much hands-on time does this workflow consume, including correction and follow-up?
Frequency
How often does the work recur, and is its volume predictable?
Process consistency
How clearly can someone explain the steps and decisions?
Data readiness
Can the required inputs be accessed appropriately, and are they usable?
Exceptions and oversight
What requires a person’s judgment, and what could go wrong?
Potential value
Which improvement would matter enough to justify the work?
Read the pattern.
Choose the next step.
A promising build candidate: frequent work, meaningful manual effort, a clear process, usable inputs, and a measurable benefit.
A discovery candidate: the problem matters, but the baseline, data access, exceptions, or responsibilities are still unclear.
A focused experiment: the process is understood, but one technical assumption needs a test before committing to a build.
Do not add the answers into a universal ROI score. High effort alone does not make a task suitable for automation. Consequences, review requirements, and operating cost still matter.
A worked illustration.
Consider a daily operating report. The owner spends time gathering figures and reconciling definitions. The report recurs each morning, the measures are explicit, but one source has not yet been approved for access.
That combination suggests a focused feasibility step: confirm the source, define freshness checks, and capture the current effort. Once access and definitions are settled, test one reporting cycle before expanding it.
Illustrative scenario, not a client result or measured saving.
See the reporting workflowBring a real workflow.
We can explore the problem, the information available, and a useful next step together.
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