Five Processes That Are Good Candidates for Workflow Automation

A practical way to identify processes where focused automation can deliver value quickly.

1. Approval processes

Purchase requests, discounts, exceptions and internal authorisations benefit from clear ownership, timestamps and escalation.

2. Customer or supplier onboarding

Structured forms and required documents reduce incomplete submissions and repeated follow-up.

3. Document review

Applications, laboratory documents, invoices and compliance records can move through capture, validation, review and approval stages.

4. Service requests

A shared queue with status, assignment and due dates is more reliable than requests scattered across inboxes.

5. Exceptions and corrective actions

Processes are often designed for the happy path. Workflow becomes particularly valuable when the business needs to track rejected, overdue or unusual items to resolution.

Choose one measurable process

A good first candidate should be frequent enough to matter, contained enough to understand and painful enough that users can recognise the improvement.