Automation is attractive because it feels like progress. But automating a process nobody has written down only makes the same confusion happen faster.
Draw what actually happens
Take one process, for example vendor invoice to payment. List each step, who does it and what they use. Draw it as a simple flow with lanes for each role. Ask the people who do the work to correct it. The first map is usually wrong in useful ways.
Look for four things
- Repeated steps that follow clear rules and are good candidates for automation.
- Hand-offs where work waits for someone.
- Decisions that need human judgement and should stay with a person.
- Exceptions and what happens when something does not fit the normal path.
Fix before you automate
Remove steps that add nothing. Clarify who approves what. Write the rules down. Often this alone removes much of the delay.
Then choose the tool
Only now decide whether the answer is an Excel template, a Power BI report, a script or a workflow tool such as n8n or Zapier. The tool follows the process, not the other way round.
Problem first, process second, tool last.
A process map also becomes the first draft of your SOP, so the effort is not wasted.