What processes can a company automate?
Not every process is worth automating, but far more than most teams assume are. Criteria to identify them and examples by area.
June 25, 2026 · Possition team · 6 min read
The right question is not whether a process can be automated, but whether it should be. Current technology can automate almost any task with clear rules; the decision comes down to impact: how many hours it consumes, how many errors it generates, and what happens when it fails.
Three signs a process is a candidate
- It is repetitive: the same work is done many times a week.
- It has clear rules: it is almost always resolved the same way.
- It moves information between systems: someone copies data from one place to another.
Examples by area
- Administration: reading and loading source documents, tracking due dates, reconciliations, recurring reports.
- Sales: logging inquiries in the CRM, opportunity follow-up, reminders, proposals from templates.
- Customer service: answers to frequent questions, classification and routing, status notices.
- Operations: inventory alerts, work orders, consolidating information from multiple sources.
Where to start
With the process that combines the most hours consumed with the clearest rules. Visible early results build the confidence to automate the rest. A short diagnostic is usually enough to rank that list with real data from your operation.