Find repetition before buying software
List tasks performed every week: checking enquiry completeness, copying approved details between systems or preparing an internal summary. Record time, volume and common mistakes. Do not start with high-consequence decisions just because they are time-consuming. A useful first experiment should be easy to stop.
Describe the five steps
For each candidate write the trigger, input, proposed action, approval and destination. An enquiry summary might be triggered by a completed form, use selected non-sensitive fields, draft a summary, ask a team member to approve it and then save it in the right record. That is an illustrative design, not an already deployed workflow.
Decide whether it needs AI
Use deterministic rules for required fields, fixed routing or known calculations. Consider AI for variable text that a person can verify. Check the actual integration and account permissions before assuming an app can read or update a system. Minimise data and use tools approved for that information.
Test exceptions deliberately
Try a duplicate submission, a missing field, unusual wording, an unavailable destination and a timeout. Check that failed tasks are visible, retries do not duplicate records and a person can take over. Do not permit an unchecked generated reply to commit a price or promise availability.
Compare the total effort
Illustrative arithmetic: if a task happens20 times a week and currently takes5 minutes, the starting effort is100 minutes. If a trial takes2 minutes to review each case plus20 minutes of maintenance, it uses60 minutes. That leaves40 minutes before software costs and errors are considered. These are invented inputs demonstrating the calculation, not a saving forecast.
Keep or stop the trial
Agree what acceptable quality means before testing. Compare supervision, rework, failures and subscriptions with the original baseline. Expand only after the person operating it understands the failure and recovery process. If the process itself is unclear, fix the process first.
Sources
General information for Australian small businesses. Check the original source before relying on a price, product feature or rule.
