1. Purpose and performance
What outcome does this process create?
Describe the customer or business result, not simply the activity.
How often does it happen?
Record weekly or monthly volume, peaks and seasonal changes.
Where is time or quality being lost?
Measure doing, waiting, chasing, correcting and re-entering—not only the obvious task.
2. Process readiness
Can the real workflow be explained?
Map what people actually do, including shortcuts, workarounds and exceptions.
Which steps can be removed first?
Challenge duplication, unused reports and approvals that add no useful control.
Are the decisions clear enough to test?
Separate consistent rules from work requiring experience, empathy or judgement.
3. Data, systems and risk
Where does the information come from?
List forms, inboxes, spreadsheets, databases and documents—and assess their consistency.
Which systems must connect?
Check access, integrations, exports, supplier restrictions and ownership before choosing tools.
What could go wrong?
Identify privacy, security, financial, customer and operational consequences.
4. Delivery and ownership
What remains human?
Define approval, exception handling, manual override and escalation.
Who owns the working system?
Name the person responsible for access, failures, changes, documentation and ongoing review.
How will success be measured?
Choose a baseline and useful outcomes: response time, cycle time, error rate, backlog, capacity or conversion.
How to score the opportunity
Give each area a simple red, amber or green rating. A high-value process with unclear rules or serious unmanaged risk is not ready to automate. It may be a strong candidate for process mapping and SOP improvement first.
It means the process is ready for a more detailed design. Keep judgement with people, automate the repeatable parts and build clear exception paths.
For a fuller commercial view, estimate the current repetitive effort with the Veliq automation ROI calculator.