What a business automation audit should include

When an audit is done, you should know where your staff's hours go, which of those hours are worth automating, and roughly what it would cost. If you finish with a slide deck and no numbers, you sat through a sales meeting.

These are the parts we would expect to see, in roughly this order.

A map of how the work really gets done

Most businesses have an official process and an actual one. The audit needs the actual one. Follow a single order, enquiry or invoice from start to finish and write down every person who touches it and every screen it passes through. Pay attention to anything copied from one system and typed into another. That is usually where the time goes.

How often, and how long

Each step on the map needs two numbers: how many times it happens in a week and how many minutes it takes. Ask the people who do it. Their estimates are good enough. Without these numbers you cannot compare tasks, and the job that annoys the owner most is often not the one costing the most.

The software you already pay for

List every tool involved and check what each one can connect to. Plenty of businesses pay for accounting, booking or CRM software that could pass data along by itself, while someone retypes it by hand. Sometimes the fix is switching on an integration that already exists.

A short ranked list

Score each candidate task on the same questions. Does it follow a rule? Does it happen often? How many people handle it? Does it need someone's judgement? Our test for picking the first automation goes through these. You should get a short list in order, with the reasons written next to each item so you can argue with them.

Things to leave alone

A good audit also tells you what not to automate. Pricing an unusual job, dealing with an unhappy customer, deciding whether to extend credit: these depend on context a rule can't capture. They can be supported with better information, but a person should still make the call.

Build cost and running cost

Every recommendation needs a price to build it, a monthly cost to keep it running, and the name of whoever will look after it. Subscriptions and usage fees add up, and they are often left out of quotes. We go through the usual gaps in what AI automation actually costs.

What happens when it fails

Automations tend to stop without telling anyone. The audit should say how a failure would be noticed and by whom. It should also say where customer data will travel and who will be able to see it.

One first project

You should leave with one small project you could start soon and measure within a few weeks. Be wary if the only next step offered is a large contract.

Warning signs

Be cautious if a specific platform is recommended before anyone has looked at your work, if there are no time or cost figures, or if you aren't allowed to keep a copy of the findings. The map of your business is yours, whoever you end up hiring.

If you'd like this done for your business, you can book a free automation audit.