Automation Opportunity Checklist

Use this checklist to identify which e-commerce workflows are worth fixing first. The strongest candidates are repetitive, cross-team, and expensive when they break.

Checklist

Signs the workflow is ready for a real systems fix

If several of these are true at once, the business is usually paying more in drag than it would cost to solve the process properly.

The workflow takes at least 5 hours per week across the team.
Work moves between ops, finance, fulfillment, or support with manual handoffs.
Errors create refunds, mis-shipments, inventory drift, or reporting cleanup.
Current automations fail silently or need regular babysitting.
The team needs clearer ownership, alerts, and logs when something fails.
A documented handoff is needed so the process does not live in tribal knowledge.

Before automating

The most reliable automations start with process clarity. If ownership and exception handling are fuzzy, the automation usually becomes another layer of confusion.

Name the source-of-truth system for each important state.
Identify where human review should stay in the workflow.
Define what happens when data does not match across systems.
Measure the cost of the failure so priorities are obvious.

When not to automate yet

If the team is still changing the process every week or the problem is really policy confusion, it is often better to stabilize the workflow first and automate second.

Unclear ownershipNo exception pathConstant policy changesNo failure visibility

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