Everyone thinks automation fails because of bad code or wrong tools. That's almost never the problem.
It fails because people automate broken processes.
You can't fix a bad system by making it faster. I've seen companies spend $50K automating something that shouldn't exist in the first place.
Here's what actually happens.
Someone has a manual process that takes too long. Data entry. Invoice processing. Customer onboarding. Whatever it is, it's eating up hours every week.
They decide to automate it. Makes sense, right?
But they never ask if the process itself is good. They just ask how to make it run without humans.
So they build automation around a process that was already broken. Now it's just broken faster.
The real work is figuring out what actually needs to be automated.
Before I write a single line of code, I spend time watching how people actually work. Not how they think they work. How they actually work.
I ask why they do things certain ways. Usually the answer is "because that's how we've always done it" or "because the old system required it."
That's when you know there's a problem.
Half the time, the solution isn't automation. It's fixing the process first, then automating the good version.
Sometimes you don't need automation at all.
I had a client who wanted to automate their weekly reporting. They were spending 10 hours compiling data from five different systems.
Turns out three of those reports were going to people who never read them. Two were duplicating information that already existed elsewhere.
We didn't automate anything. We just stopped making reports nobody needed.
Saved 10 hours. Cost nothing.
The technical part is easy.
Once you know what actually needs to happen, building the automation is straightforward. Connect this system to that one. When X happens, do Y. Run it on a schedule.
That's not the hard part.
The hard part is understanding the business well enough to know what's worth automating and what's worth leaving alone.
Most consultants skip this step. They're too eager to start building. They want to show progress. Write code. Demo features.
But if you automate the wrong thing, none of that matters.
So before you automate anything, ask these questions:
Does this process actually need to exist? Could we just stop doing it?
Is the process itself good, or are we working around limitations that don't exist anymore?
If we fixed the process first, would we still need automation?
Is this repetitive enough and high-volume enough to justify the setup time?
If you can't answer yes to the last question and at least think hard about the first three, don't automate it yet.
Fix the process. Then automate the good version.
That's how you build automation that actually works.