Business Process Automation: 10 Tasks Companies Should Stop Doing Manually

2. Lead Assignment

When a new sales lead arrives, someone may need to decide which salesperson should receive it.

For a small company, manual assignment works.

At higher volumes, it becomes inefficient.

Rules can automatically assign leads based on factors such as:

• Country
• Product
• Industry
• Company size
• Sales territory
• Account ownership
• Team availability

For example:

New Lead
   ↓
Country?
   ↓
Singapore → APAC Team
Australia → ANZ Team
France → EU Team

Salespeople receive leads immediately instead of waiting for someone to distribute them.

3. Approval Workflows

Approvals are another process frequently trapped in email.

An employee sends a request.

A manager replies.

Someone forwards the approval to finance.

Finance asks for additional information.

Eventually nobody is sure which version is current.

An automated workflow can make the process explicit:

Request
   ↓
Manager Approval
   ↓
Finance Approval
   ↓
Approved
   ↓
Employee Notification

The system can record who approved the request and when.

Common use cases include:

• Purchase requests
• Expenses
• Leave requests
• Discounts
• Contracts
• Supplier onboarding

4. Invoice Processing

Finance teams often receive invoices from multiple suppliers in different formats.

Employees may manually: