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Manual processes do not fail suddenly. They degrade, absorbing more of the week until the cost is normal and invisible. These are the signals that the threshold has been crossed, and the questions worth asking before assuming software is the answer. One: the same data is typed into more than one system Rekeying between systems is the clearest candidate in most businesses. It is high volume, entirely rule-governed, and it introduces errors that surface much later in something expensive like an invoice or a delivery address. Two: growth requires headcount in a straight line If handling twice the volume means

Most automation return on investment figures do not survive contact with a finance team, and the reason is usually that the baseline was reconstructed after the fact. Once the old process is gone, everyone remembers it as slower and more error-prone than it was. The fix is unglamorous. Measure the manual process before you replace it, and agree in advance what would count as success. Capture the baseline first That fourth point is the one teams skip and the one that decides whether the saving is real. Hours freed from a role with no queue of higher-value work behind it

The first automation a company builds decides whether there is a second one. Choose something visible and hard, and a failure becomes the story everyone remembers. Choose something dull and well understood, and you buy the credibility to attempt the harder thing later. The instinct is to start with whatever is most annoying. That is usually the wrong candidate, because annoying work is often annoying precisely because it involves judgement nobody has ever written down. The test that predicts success Could you explain this task to a competent new starter in one page of writing, such that they would do