How To Audit A Manual Process Before Automation

An automation proposal needs more than a list of steps. It needs evidence of how the process behaves when the normal path is interrupted.

Choose a recently finished item and reconstruct its start, intermediate states and final output. Use the records available, then ask the people involved to explain any steps that left no trace.

Distinguish active work from waiting. A task may take little handling time but spend several days awaiting information. Automating data entry will not necessarily reduce that wait.

Repeat the exercise for a rejected, incomplete or corrected item. Identify which decisions followed a stable rule and which depended on judgment. Write down the information needed to make those decisions.

For example, a missing reference number may be a validation rule. Deciding whether an unusual request belongs in the service may require a person. These should not be treated as the same kind of automation.

Select a step with reliable input, an observable result and a clear failure route. State how an operator can inspect or correct the result. Keep the original evidence available during the trial.

Compare the trial with the original cases, including the exception. The product pages provide the current scope for preparing this discussion before choosing software.