Which business process should you automate first?

This is a concise English adaptation. Read the full Spanish edition for the complete analysis, tables, and reporting context.

The practical takeaway

Record repetitive tasks for a week: frequency, time per case, systems involved, waiting time, and common errors. Score candidates on volume, effort, impact, integration difficulty, and risk. Good first projects have an owner, representative examples, and a result that can be checked. Avoid starting with poorly understood, exceptional, or high-impact work. Select one bounded process and establish a baseline before building so the later result can be assessed against something concrete.

Keep these points in mind.

• Standardize the process before moving it into software.
• Favor meaningful impact and manageable complexity for the first pilot.
• Keep human review where ambiguity or consequences matter.

Sources in the original edition

• Source 1: www.nist.gov (opens in a new tab)
• Source 2: digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu (opens in a new tab)