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Automation & Orchestration

Business process automation: the hours are between the tasks

Automating a single task saves minutes. The hours are lost between tasks: waiting for photos, re-keying parts, chasing an approval, checking a step happened. Business process automation redesigns the whole process so software carries those handoffs, and decides deliberately which steps stay with people.
Discuss your systemSee where the close-out's time went ↓
Mon 15:40Today17 h3 h22 h24 hThu 10:15Redesigned17 h3 h22 h24 hThu 10:15Mon 17:351 h 50 min · manager approvesWorkWaiting

Minutes in the tasks, hours between them

Look at where a process spends its time and the tasks are small. Creating an invoice takes fifteen minutes. The two days around it are spent waiting for someone to notice that the photos are missing, that the manager hasn't approved, that the person who sends invoices is out.

That's why automating a single task rarely changes much. The work goes faster and the process doesn't. Process automation starts from how the work actually runs and redesigns the handoffs, so the next step starts because something happened, not because someone noticed.

Automating a task

  1. 01Pick the most tedious step and script it.
  2. 02Connect two tools so data copies across.
  3. 03Each automation is set up on its own, by whoever needed it.

Where it breaks: the waits between steps stay, fragile point-to-point connections fail silently, and nobody is sure what each one does.

Redesigning the process

  1. 01Map the process as it runs, including the exceptions.
  2. 02Decide the states, owners and where automation stops.
  3. 03Start each case from a business event and save its state.
  4. 04Give exceptions a named owner.
  5. 05Watch every run and measure the process.

The tasks get faster too. The big change is that cases stop waiting.

Where the close-out's time went

The four waits discovery found in one job's close-out, and what replaced each one.
17 hPhotos weren't attached; the office texted the next morningThe job can't be marked complete without photos
3 hWaiting for the technician to replyGone with the first wait
22 hThe manager had to approve the discount in personThe discount rule is applied automatically; approval is requested at once, with a summary, and done from a phone
24 hOnly the office lead sent invoicesThe invoice is created and sent as soon as it's approved

Four tasks disappeared as well: texting for photos, re-keying parts, checking the service-plan sheet and creating the invoice by hand. What's left is one decision, made by the person who should make it.

Six steps, in this order

The order matters. Automating before the process is understood just makes it fail faster.

  1. 01

    Discovery

    Map it as it runs

    Map the process as it runs today, including exceptions and workarounds.

  2. 02

    Future-state design

    Decide what it should be

    Define the steps, owners, states, and where automation stops.

  3. 03

    Event-driven execution

    Start from what happened

    Each case starts from a business event and moves through explicit states.

  4. 04

    Integration

    Act on the systems carefully

    Steps act on the systems involved through bounded, authenticated interfaces.

  5. 05

    Exceptions and ownership

    Name a person

    Cases outside the rules go to a named person.

  6. 06

    Monitoring and measurement

    Keep it visible

    Volume, cycle time, failures, and exceptions are visible.

What process automation hands off

In

Current process
as it actually runs
Systems
the ones it touches
Rules and owners
who decides what
Process automation
discover · design · run · watch

Out

Future process
documented, agreed
Running workflows
with saved state
Exceptions and metrics
owned queues, cycle time

Worth it when the process runs often

Good fit

  • Frequent, rule-based processes that span several systems or people.
  • Work that waits between steps more than it takes to do them.
  • Earlier automations that nobody trusts any more.

Not the right fit

  • The process is still changing or isn't agreed.
  • It runs too rarely for automation to pay back; a checklist is cheaper.

Where the method is delivered

Next to process automation

Questions about business process automation

What's the difference between business process automation and RPA?

RPA imitates a person clicking through screens to do a task. Process automation redesigns the process and connects systems directly through their interfaces. We'd only use screen automation where a system offers no other way in.

Which process should we automate first?

One that runs often, has mostly stable rules, moves data between systems by hand, and costs something when it's late or wrong. Volume, cost of errors and stability decide the order.

We already have some automations. Do we start over?

Not necessarily. Discovery includes the automations you have: what they do, whether anyone monitors them, and which can stay. Fragile ones get rebuilt around saved state and monitoring.

Will people lose control of the process?

The opposite. Every case has a visible state and an owner, judgment steps stay with named people, and exceptions reach someone instead of disappearing.