How Do You Identify the Best Automation Candidates?
Businesses identify the best automation candidates by gathering a team who actually work in the processes daily, screening a longlist of possible candidates against clear criteria, and ranking them by frequency, volume and runtime to find where automation will have the most impact. Not every process is a good fit for automation, and starting with the wrong one can waste time and undermine confidence in the approach before it's had a fair chance.
Why picking the wrong process first slows everything down
It's tempting to automate whatever feels most frustrating right now, but frustration isn't the same as automation potential. A process might be annoying because it's genuinely complex and needs a person's judgement, in which case automation will struggle, or it might be a good candidate that nobody's prioritised simply because it's less visible.
Without a structured approach, organisations tend to run into the same issues:
- Starting with a process that's too complex or inconsistent, leading to a disappointing first result.
- Missing high-impact opportunities simply because they're less visible or less frustrating day to day.
- No shared way to compare and rank different candidates against each other.
- Automation initiatives losing momentum after an early project doesn't deliver.
How the best candidates actually get identified
- 01
Gather a team of internal champions
Assemble a team of subject matter experts who are involved in the relevant processes daily, and organise collaborative workshops to surface candidates.
- 02
Identify a longlist of ideal processes
Screen candidates against the traits that make a process genuinely well suited to automation, covered below, and note which need rules-based automation and which need AI.
- 03
Pick selection criteria for ranking
Score each candidate on frequency, how regularly the process occurs, volume, the total number of instances, and runtime, the average time required per instance.
- 04
Assess the results
Calculate effort per process, frequency multiplied by volume multiplied by runtime, and identify which processes score highest.
- 05
Select the preferred candidate for process mapping
The highest scoring process becomes the starting point for detailed process mapping and automation design.
What makes a strong automation candidate
- High volume, low complexity processes. Stable processes running on stable underlying applications.
- Processes with a low exception rate. Rule-based processes that follow the same logic consistently.
- Processes performed by large teams, where the impact of automating is felt widely.
- Mature, well established processes rather than ones still evolving.
- Processes with standard, readable digital inputs. Highly manual and repetitive processes.
Rules-based or AI? The traits above describe the best candidates for rules-based automation, where the answer is clearly right or wrong and you need a clear audit trail. AI widens the field. Processes involving unstructured documents, emails or free text, or tasks that need interpretation, can now be automated too, as long as a person stays in the loop for decisions with real business impact.
How Inpute helps businesses identify automation candidates
We run structured workshops with the people who actually work in your processes daily, screening candidates against proven criteria rather than relying on assumptions about where the biggest problems are.
That includes deciding which processes suit rules-based automation, which suit AI, and where a person needs to stay in the loop.
Getting the first candidate right matters for momentum. We help select a starting point that's genuinely well suited to automation, so an early win builds confidence for the automation initiatives that follow.
Where this fits with the rest of your automation strategy
Identifying the right automation candidates is the step that precedes almost everything else. Get this right, and the processes covered elsewhere here, finance automation, repetitive admin, distribution efficiency, become the natural output of a structured selection process rather than a guess.
Frequently asked questions
There's no fixed number, but casting a reasonably wide net across departments before applying selection criteria tends to surface candidates that wouldn't have come up otherwise.
Other factors can break the tie, such as which process has more visible sponsorship, or which offers a better opportunity to demonstrate value quickly.
Yes. Process mining can validate assumptions about frequency, volume and complexity using actual data, rather than relying purely on workshop input.
Usually, but not always. Organisational readiness and stakeholder buy-in matter too, so the highest scoring candidate on paper isn't always the right first move if it lacks support.
Process Automation solutions we deliver
Removing manual work from a process frees people to focus on what actually needs their judgement. Here's how organisations are putting that into practice.
- How Do Organisations Scale Operations Without Increasing Headcount?
Automate the processes limiting growth, so transaction volumes can increase without a proportional rise in staff.
- How Do Finance Teams Automate Manual Processes?
Remove spreadsheet dependency and email approvals from finance operations, replacing manual reporting and reconciliation with automated workflows.
- How Do Distribution and Logistics Companies Improve Operational Efficiency?
Small, incremental improvements that have an outsized impact in high-volume, lower-margin operations.
- How Low-Code Automation Tools Like Microsoft Power Platform Drive Rapid Operational Efficiencies
Build and deploy automation in weeks using tools like the Microsoft Power Platform, without a lengthy, costly development cycle.
- How Do You Identify the Best Automation Candidates?
A practical framework for finding and prioritising the processes most worth automating first.
- How Can Case Management Improve Customer Experience?
Track every customer interaction to resolution with a complete view of the information your team needs.
- How Do Businesses Improve Process Visibility Through Process Mining?
See what's actually happening in your processes, using real data rather than assumptions or interviews.
See how this would work for your organisation
Get in touch for a free, no-obligation walkthrough of how to identify your best automation candidates.
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