The benefits of automating workflows are commonly understood and accepted. Every business wants to improve the quality and consistency of their customer service. Every business wants to improve productivity. Every business wants to reduce costs. Every business wants to accelerate their product or service delivery.
Often the reasons given why workflows are not automated is that there is insufficient capacity or capability to do the automating, or that the workflows themselves are inadequately defined or understood. However, it is not often that the reason that a workflow is not automated is because it is not justified.
This leads to the question: Should every workflow be automated?
To answer that question, it is important to understand the nature or characteristics of the workflow which is being considered for automation. Workflows can be simple or complex, in terms of the steps or conditional branches in the workflow. Workflows can have a focussed or broad scope in a business, defining the flow of work in one department only or across multiple company divisions. Workflows can also be static or dynamic, referring to how the workflow changes due to organisational, technological, financial, or other factors.
Once the workflow characteristics are understood, it will be easier to determine how each workflow automation will deliver a nett return and how much effort is required to implement and maintain, where the nett return is the value or benefit gained when a workflow is automated, and the effort is the number of manhours, the technology required, financial investment needed, or operational expenses incurred to implement and maintain the automation.
Referring to the four-quadrant diagram, it goes without saying that workflows that fall into the top left (green) quadrant must be prioritised for automation immediately. The workflows that should be automated as soon as possible are those that fall into the top right (light green) quadrant. Any workflows that fall into the bottom left (light orange) quadrant should be considered for automation, but only if there are adequate resources available and there are no other more important or urgent business priorities. Workflow automation that falls into the bottom right (dark orange) quadrant is not justified, where the nett return is low and the effort is high.
Applying this methodology will ensure that the workflow automation nett returns are maximised and the effort required to implement and maintain the automations will be minimised. More importantly, it will also avoid efforts to automate workflows which is unnecessary and unjustified.