100 Business Processes You Can Automate: A Practical Checklist

Lead capture and qualification

Use these ideas to reduce delays between a new enquiry and a useful next step. Keep qualification rules visible and let a person handle unusual, sensitive, or high-value cases.

• Capture website enquiries in a shared lead queue
• Detect and merge duplicate lead records
• Tag leads by source, service, or location
• Route enquiries to the right team or branch
• Send an approved acknowledgement after an enquiry
• Collect missing details with a short guided form
• Create a callback task when a lead requests one
• Notify an owner when a new lead has no assignee
• Flag enquiries that appear to be spam
• Summarise a long enquiry for the assigned teammate

Sales and CRM

Automate record keeping and reminders around the sales process while keeping pricing, commitments, and final decisions under staff control.

• Create a CRM record from a qualified enquiry
• Set a follow-up task after a sales conversation
• Remind owners about overdue follow-ups
• Prepare a meeting brief from approved CRM fields
• Draft a proposal from an approved template
• Track proposal status and notify the owner of changes
• Request approval for a non-standard discount
• Log a call outcome from a structured form
• Send a meeting confirmation and calendar details
• Create a handover summary when an opportunity changes owner

Customer support

Connect common support requests to the right knowledge and queue. Keep a clear human handover for unclear, sensitive, or consequential cases.

• Classify a new support request by topic
• Route a ticket by product, priority, or language
• Suggest an answer from approved help content
• Summarise a conversation for the next support agent
• Notify customers when a ticket status changes
• Flag messages that mention urgent service issues
• Collect the order or account reference needed to help
• Create a return or replacement review task
• Escalate a request that has missed its service target
• Send a short satisfaction survey after resolution

Marketing and content operations

Use automation to organise drafts, approvals, and reporting. Keep public claims, regulated content, and final publishing under an accountable reviewer.

• Turn an approved brief into a draft content outline
• Route campaign copy for review and sign-off
• Schedule reminders for upcoming campaign milestones
• Collect approved social posts in a publishing queue
• Tag inbound campaign leads with the correct source
• Send a weekly campaign summary to the team
• Check that required links and tracking fields are present
• Notify the owner when an asset is ready for review
• Repurpose approved long-form content into draft snippets
• Archive final assets with version and approval details

Finance and administration

Automate preparation, matching, reminders, and exception queues. Keep payment release, accounting judgments, and financial approvals with authorised people.

• Extract invoice fields into a review queue
• Match invoices to purchase orders for human review
• Flag missing invoice details before processing
• Remind approvers about pending expense claims
• Categorise routine expenses for accountant review
• Prepare a list of overdue customer invoices
• Send an approved payment reminder on a scheduled date
• Notify an owner about a subscription renewal date
• Collect receipts and attach them to an expense record
• Prepare a monthly cash-flow data pack from connected sources

Orders, inventory, and fulfilment

Connect order updates and stock signals so the team can act sooner. Decide how the business should handle conflicts, cancellations, and unavailable items.

• Sync new orders into an operations queue
• Notify fulfilment staff when an order is ready
• Flag an order missing a required field
• Send an approved order-status update
• Create a task for an address or delivery exception
• Alert a buyer when stock reaches a chosen threshold
• Summarise daily orders by status and channel
• Route a refund request for review
• Record a supplier delivery date against an order
• Create a reorder draft for staff approval

People operations and internal work

Reduce repeated coordination for internal teams. Employee access, performance, hiring, and other sensitive decisions need human ownership.

• Send a new-hire checklist to the responsible team
• Collect onboarding documents into an access-controlled folder
• Create approved account setup tasks for IT
• Remind managers about incomplete onboarding steps
• Route a leave request to the correct approver
• Turn a meeting action item into an assigned task
• Prepare a weekly team update from status fields
• Collect equipment requests in a consistent form
• Notify facilities when a workplace issue is logged
• Archive completed project records by retention rules

Appointments and service delivery

Automate the coordination around appointments while allowing people to resolve exceptions and special requirements.

• Offer available appointment slots from a connected calendar
• Send an appointment confirmation after booking
• Send an approved reminder before a visit
• Collect intake details before an appointment
• Route a reschedule request to the right calendar
• Notify staff when an appointment is cancelled
• Create a follow-up task after a completed visit
• Flag a booking that lacks required information
• Send directions or preparation instructions from an approved template
• Track appointment requests that have not received a response

Data, reporting, and quality checks

Use automation to move information and highlight records that need attention. Keep a person responsible for interpreting reports and acting on consequential decisions.

• Sync approved fields between business systems
• Validate required fields before a record is saved
• Flag records with inconsistent formats
• Prepare a daily operations summary from source systems
• Send a weekly report to a defined audience
• Compare expected and actual task status for review
• Identify records that have not changed within a chosen period
• Create a queue of failed integrations for an operator
• Notify an owner when a scheduled data sync fails
• Keep an audit note when an automated workflow changes a record

Industry-specific workflow ideas

Adapt these patterns only after reviewing the information involved, the relevant rules, and the people accountable for the work. Avoid using AI as an unsupervised decision-maker for health, credit, hiring, or other high-impact outcomes.

• Real estate: route property enquiries by area and viewing preference
• Real estate: create a viewing follow-up task after an appointment
• Healthcare: send non-clinical appointment logistics from approved content
• Healthcare: route clinical questions to qualified staff without generating a diagnosis
• E-commerce: answer order-status questions from verified order data
• Education: route course enquiries by programme and intake
• Education: remind staff about incomplete application records
• Hospitality: collect booking preferences for staff confirmation
• Retail: notify a store team about an online stock question
• Professional services: collect matter details into a restricted intake queue

Choose a safe first workflow

Score each idea for repeatability, expected value, data quality, and consequence if it fails. Pick a bounded process with an accountable owner, a baseline, and a simple pause or rollback path. Document what automation may do, what requires approval, and how exceptions reach a person.