To identify automation opportunities reliably, measure how work actually happens instead of collecting ideas. Observe workflows across applications, find tasks that are frequent, repetitive and rule-based, multiply their time cost by the people who repeat them, and rank the results by impact and feasibility.
Why brainstorming fails
The opportunities a workshop finds depend on who is in the room and what they happen to notice about their own work. People do not report habits they no longer see, and the most expensive inefficiencies are usually invisible for exactly that reason. Ideation is the bottleneck, and data removes it.
The five-step method
- Observe real work. Collect workflow data across applications for two to four weeks. Interviews and surveys supplement observation; they cannot replace it.
- Find the repetition. Look for sequences performed identically and often: exports and imports, manual report assembly, status chasing.
- Apply the multiplier. Time per occurrence × frequency × people × working days. A 12-minute daily task across 40 people over 220 working days is 1,760 hours per year, a full-time-equivalent hiding in plain sight.
- Score and rank. Rate each candidate by impact, frequency, people affected and automation feasibility. High value plus low difficulty goes first, and early wins fund the harder items.
- Verify after implementation. Keep the baseline measurement and re-measure after the automation ships. Verified gains protect the program's credibility and budget.
- Observe
- Find
- Multiply
- Rank
- Verify
Repeated stepsStart
Constant switching
Waiting time
BeforeAfterTime recovered
Which tools, for how long, in what order.The same steps, again and again.Across the whole team, every day.The biggest first. Start there.Measured again after the change.
Signals that a task is automatable
- It follows written or unwritten rules with few judgment calls
- Its inputs and outputs are digital and structured
- It happens on a schedule or a predictable trigger
- Multiple people perform it the same way
- People describe it as boring, which is the human word for rule-based
Running this method manually is possible and worthwhile. Running it with instrumentation is faster and more complete: Nodra observes the work, our analysts carry out steps one through four from that data and walk you through them in a meeting as the Automation Opportunity Map, with step five built in as re-measurement.