The first five automations every company should build
After a hundred automation projects, the same five workflows pay back fastest. Start here before buying anything.
Ask ten companies what they would automate and you get ten different answers. Ask what they actually automated first and the list is surprisingly short. These five show up in almost every engagement we run, and they are the ones we would build on day one.
1. New lead to first reply
Every form, chat and ad lead should get a reply within a minute and a record in your CRM within a second. This is the cheapest revenue you will ever earn: the lead is already interested, and the only thing you are fixing is speed.
2. Order to accounting
Orders retyped into an accounting system are errors waiting to happen. Connect the store, the marketplace or the order form directly to your invoicing tool and let people check exceptions instead of entering everything.
3. Friday report
If someone assembles a weekly report by hand, that report is already a day old when it is read. Pull the numbers from the sources on a schedule and deliver the same report to the same people every Monday at eight.
4. Appointment reminders
No-shows are a scheduling problem, not a customer problem. A reminder the day before and a confirmation request two hours before remove most of them.
5. Review requests
A review request sent at the right moment, a few days after delivery or a visit, is the simplest marketing automation there is. It compounds for years.
How to start
Pick the one that touches the most people in your company. Build it in two weeks. Then do the next one.