Start with volume, not novelty
The best first automation is rarely the most impressive one. It is the task your team does dozens of times a week, follows roughly the same steps each time, and quietly resents.
Before choosing, count. A week of tallying requests by type usually reveals two or three processes that consume most of the manual effort.
Five reliable candidates
Across the teams we work with, these five pay back fastest:
- Lead intake: enrich, score and route new enquiries with a drafted first reply.
- Support triage: classify tickets, answer common questions and escalate the rest with context.
- Invoice matching: reconcile invoices against orders and payments, flagging only exceptions.
- Report assembly: pull numbers from several tools into a weekly summary.
- Scheduling: book, confirm and remind without email ping-pong.
Score each candidate
Rate every candidate on hours saved per month, how clear the rules are, and how costly a mistake would be. Start where hours are high, rules are clear and mistakes are cheap to catch.
Keep a human approval step for the first few weeks. It builds trust and gives you real examples to improve the system with.
Want help applying this to your team? Book a free AI workflow audit or talk to us about your project.
