10 Business Processes You Can Automate

Automate a process because its inputs, rules and owner are understood, not simply because a tool can connect two applications. The following ten candidates are starting points for assessment. They do not all need AI, and they do not all deserve immediate implementation.

Customer-facing candidates

1. Website enquiry routing: validate a submission and assign it to an available owner.
2. Appointment reminders: send a permitted reminder for a confirmed booking and stop after cancellation.
3. Quotation follow-up tasks: create a task after an agreed interval, rather than sending unreviewed sales messages.
4. Support triage: propose a category and escalate uncertain or urgent requests to a person.
5. Customer onboarding: create a checklist after an agreement is confirmed, not merely after a contact is added.

Internal operations candidates

1. Invoice reconciliation preparation: match candidate records for finance review; do not assume ambiguous matches are correct.
2. Inventory alerts: notify a responsible buyer when a defined threshold is crossed.
3. Weekly reporting: assemble agreed metrics from named sources and flag missing data.
4. Document approval routing: send the current version to the right reviewer and record the decision.
5. Access-removal tasks: create a controlled checklist when an authorised departure event is recorded.

Compare risk and value

Choose a repetitive, well-understood process with a manageable failure consequence. Do not start by automating an exception-heavy approval that the team cannot explain manually.

Build for repetition and failure

The same event may arrive more than once. Use an event identifier or other idempotency control so a retry does not duplicate a lead or message. Add bounded retries and a visible failure queue. These are system design requirements; a workflow diagram alone does not establish reliability.

Run one pilot before expanding

Compare manual handling effort with the complete automated process, including monitoring and exceptions. Keep a manual fallback and record who approves changes. Website leads to CRM provides a more detailed first-integration example.