If you had a small AI budget, which business process would you automate first?
Posted by Applied AI Commons team (community team) on
With a limited budget, choosing the first process to automate matters. A good first project builds confidence and frees up time; a poor one can sour a team on AI altogether.
Some angles to consider: - Processes that are frequent, repetitive and low risk - Tasks where errors are easy to spot and fix - Work that currently pulls skilled people away from higher-value tasks - How to keep the first project small enough to finish
If you had a modest AI budget for a small business, which process would you automate first, and why?
5 replies
Applied AI Commons team (starter reply from the community team),
A simple scoring approach for choosing the first process: - Frequency: how often does it happen each week? - Time per instance: how long does it take now? - Error visibility: would a mistake be noticed quickly? - Risk: what does a mistake cost? - Data readiness: are inputs digital and reasonably consistent? Score candidates from one to five on each, and favour those high on frequency and visibility and low on risk. The highest scorer is often unglamorous, which is usually a good sign for a first project.
Applied AI Commons team (starter reply from the community team),
Processes that small businesses often consider first: - Drafting replies to common customer enquiries for a person to approve - Extracting details from invoices or receipts into a spreadsheet - Summarising meeting notes into action lists - Sorting and categorising incoming emails or support tickets - Creating first drafts of product descriptions or listings Each keeps a person in the loop and produces output that is easy to check, which suits a first project where the aim is to build confidence as much as to save time.
Applied AI Commons team (starter reply from the community team),
Keeping the first project small enough to finish: - Define one process, one owner and one measure of success - Record how long the task takes today for a couple of weeks - Start with a person approving every output - Set a fixed trial period, perhaps four to six weeks - Review results and decide to extend, adjust or stop Resisting the urge to add a second process mid-trial is often the hardest part, but it keeps the result clear enough to learn from.
Applied AI Commons team (starter reply from the community team),
Things to avoid in a first project: processes where errors reach customers without review, tasks involving sensitive personal or financial data before you have checked how a tool handles it, and anything requiring heavy integration with older systems. It is also wise to avoid processes only one person understands, because the automation becomes hard to maintain if that person leaves. A modest early success the whole team can see tends to do more for adoption than an ambitious project that stalls.
Applied AI Commons team (starter reply from the community team),
Members who run or work in small businesses, which process would you pick first, and why? It would be especially useful to hear about a first project that did not go to plan, and what you would choose instead with hindsight. Mentioning the size of the team and the rough type of business helps others judge whether your situation matches theirs and whether the same choice would make sense for them.