Business Process Automation: 10 Tasks Companies Should Stop Doing Manually

Suppose 15 employees each spend three hours per week manually transferring information.

That equals:

15 × 3 = 45 hours per week

Across 50 working weeks:

45 × 50 = 2,250 hours per year

If the process can be reduced significantly through automation, the business case becomes much easier to evaluate.

This calculation does not even include the cost of human error.

Don't Automate a Bad Process

There is an important warning.

Automation makes processes faster.

That does not mean the process is good.

Suppose a purchase request currently requires seven approvals even though only two provide meaningful oversight.

Automating all seven approvals gives you a faster version of an inefficient workflow.

Before automating, ask:

• Why does this step exist?
• Does someone actually use this information?
• Is this approval necessary?
• Can two steps be combined?
• Can the process be simplified?

The sequence should be:

Understand → Simplify → Automate

Not:

Automate everything that already exists.

Start With High-Volume, Low-Complexity Tasks

Companies do not need to automate the most complicated workflow first.

A better starting point is usually a task that is:

• Repetitive
• Frequent
• Rule-based
• Time-consuming
• Easy to measure
• Low risk

This allows the organization to demonstrate value before tackling larger automation projects.