Most growing businesses already know they're losing time to manual work. What they don't know is where to start. Here's the simple approach we use in discovery workshops to find the changes that pay off first.
What counts as an automation quick win?
A quick win is a change that saves time every week, can be set up in days rather than months, and doesn't depend on replacing your core systems. It usually removes a step someone does by memory, by copy-and-paste or by chasing.
Good quick wins share three traits:
- They happen often: daily or weekly, not once a quarter.
- They follow the same steps every time.
- They involve moving information from one place to another, or reminding someone to act.
Where do quick wins usually hide?
In almost every business we work with, the same areas come up:
- Follow-ups and reminders that rely on someone remembering.
- Re-typing the same client details into the CRM, a spreadsheet and the accounting system.
- Hand-offs between teams, such as sales to onboarding, or enquiry to quote.
- Weekly reports built by hand from several systems.
- Document collection: chasing forms, IDs and signatures by email.
How do you find them in your own business?
Pick one team and ask three questions:
- What do you do every week that feels like a waste of your skills?
- Where do things get stuck waiting for someone?
- What would break if one particular person went on leave for a month?
Write the answers down as steps, then circle every step where a person is moving information or reminding someone. Those circled steps are your candidates.
How do you decide what to automate first?
For each candidate, estimate the hours it takes per week across the team, and how hard it would be to change. Then rank them. Start with the ones that save the most time for the least effort. As a rough check, multiply hours saved per week by the number of people affected and their hourly cost. That number is what the problem costs you today.
Often the first wins need no new software at all. Many can be built with tools you already pay for, such as monday.com automations or the integrations built into your accounting system.
What should you avoid?
- Automating a broken process. If the steps don't make sense, fix them first or you'll just do the wrong thing faster.
- Starting with the hardest problem. Early wins build confidence and momentum for bigger changes.
- Building automations nobody owns. Every automation needs someone who knows what it does and gets told when it fails.
When is it worth getting help?
If your quick wins span several systems, or the real problem is how work flows between teams, a structured discovery workshop will find more value, faster. That's where we start with most clients: mapping how work really moves, then ranking every opportunity by the hours it gives back.