Finding automation that actually pays for itself
Not every process should be automated, and not every automation needs AI. Start by measuring the work.
Trillune Engineering5 min read
The quickest way to waste an automation budget is to start with the technology. The best candidates are found by looking at the work: what's repetitive, frequent, rule-based and costly when done wrong.
A simple scoring exercise
- Frequency — how many times a week does this happen?
- Effort — how long does each instance take?
- Error cost — what happens when it's done wrong?
- Stability — are the rules settled, or do they change monthly?
- Data access — is the information available in a system, or in someone's inbox?
High frequency, meaningful effort and stable rules make a strong candidate. Unstable rules usually mean the process needs redesigning before it's automated.
Deterministic first, AI where judgement is needed
Moving data between systems, sending notifications, generating documents from templates: these are reliably handled with ordinary integrations and rules. AI is useful where inputs are unstructured — reading documents, classifying requests, drafting responses — and works best with a human reviewing low-confidence cases.
Automation pays for itself when it removes real, measured work — and when the team trusts it enough to stop doing that work by hand.