How to spot a five minute admin task worth automating

The tasks worth looking at first are rarely the big ones. They are the small jobs that happen every day and never feel worth mentioning: re-typing details from an email into a spreadsheet, checking whether a form arrived, writing the same short reply for the twentieth time.

A five minute task done twice a day adds up to about 42 hours over a 250-day working year, a little over one standard working week. That is the reason to look at it, not because automation is exciting.

Three questions worth asking

• Does it repeat in the same shape? If the steps change every time, you probably have a judgement problem rather than an automation problem.
• Is the input already structured? Tasks that start from a form, a template or a consistent email are much easier to help with than tasks that start from a phone call.
• What happens if the output is wrong? Low stakes means you can move quickly. High stakes means a person has to check the output before it is used, and that check has to be part of the design.

Time it honestly first

Before changing anything, write down how long the task actually takes and how often it happens. People usually overestimate the annoying tasks and underestimate the quiet ones. The free resources include a short admin drain audit for exactly this. It runs in your browser and nothing is submitted or saved.

Sometimes the answer is fewer steps

A fair number of tasks disappear once someone asks why they exist. A report nobody reads. A double entry that exists because two systems were introduced in the wrong order. Removing the step is cheaper than automating it, and we will say so when that is what we find.

If you want a second pair of eyes

We are based in Bournemouth and available to work with professionals, charities and smaller organisations across Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, and remotely elsewhere. Most engagements begin as one small practical project around a single task.