How to Pick the First Process to Automate With AI, Using a Simple Scoring Method

Teams starting automation often struggle to choose which task to tackle first, and a wrong choice can waste weeks of effort. The article proposes a deliberately simple method that scores each candidate task from one to five on four factors: how often it occurs, how clearly its rules can be written down, the volume of items handled, and how recoverable an error would be. Tasks with unrecoverable errors should only be automated up to the point of a human decision. Totals above fifteen mark strong first candidates, while scores under ten suggest reconsidering. The author also advises checking data access and assigning an owner for the exceptions automation cannot handle. In a finance example, a customer-email task scored 19 and beat the team's original priorities.