Do you need help with this topic?
This week, I was at a conference chatting with other managed service providers about the future and how we’re using technology to support our customers. A big topic, as you can imagine, was artificial intelligence and how it’s going to change businesses. We’re not just talking about chatbots like ChatGPT, but about using AI agents to automate business processes. So, the question is, what should we be automating first?
Deciding What To Automate
There are a few ways to think about this. One approach is to look at tasks based on how often they’re done and how important they are to the business. You could imagine a grid where you plot tasks based on frequency and importance. But there’s another way to break it down.
Key Takeaways
- Focus on tasks that consume a lot of time and energy but don’t add much value.
Categorising Your Tasks
We can split tasks into different areas of the business. Think about categories like sales, marketing, accounts, finance, and service delivery. Within each of these areas, we can identify the specific tasks that take up a significant amount of time and effort.
For example, in marketing, maybe it’s generating social media posts or drafting initial email campaigns. In finance, it could be processing invoices or reconciling accounts. For service delivery, perhaps it’s responding to common customer queries or generating standard reports.
The goal here is to pinpoint those activities that are repetitive and time-consuming. By identifying these, we can then look at how AI agents can step in to handle them. This frees up your team to focus on more complex, strategic, or creative work that truly drives the business forward.
It’s not about replacing people; it’s about making your business run more smoothly and efficiently. By automating the right tasks, you can save time, reduce errors, and make your operations more scalable. So, start by looking at what takes up a lot of your team’s energy but doesn’t necessarily move the needle much. That’s usually a good place to begin your automation journey with AI.
