Opportunities: find what to automate

An opportunity is a process you might automate. You capture it, answer a few questions, and Automize scores it and places it on a matrix so you can see what is worth doing first. You can then promote it to a project, have a bot record it, and later compare what it really saved with what you expected.

Opportunities are on plans that include Opportunities (process discovery). Open Opportunities from the menu.

1. Add an opportunity

There are two ways in:

• Add: type it in. Fill in Which process is this?, What does it achieve?, a Priority (Low, Medium, High or Critical) and an Owner. Priority is your own call and is kept apart from the scores.
• Discover from documents: start from what you already have (see the next section).

2. Read it from an SOP

Upload the SOP, the process map, or screenshots of somebody doing the job. Automize reads them and proposes an assessment, then asks you the few things a document cannot answer.

1. On the Opportunities page, open the menu next to Add and choose Discover from documents. On an opportunity that has nothing read yet, use Read a document under Start from a document.
2. Choose your files. Readable types are PDF, DOCX, XLSX, TXT, CSV, PNG and JPG. A diagram is read as a diagram, not flattened to text.
3. Add anything the documents do not say under Anything to add? (optional), then click Read the documents.

The opportunity shows Systems this work touches, The procedure, as read and the Documents it read. Answers taken from the document are marked Read from the document. To add more files later, use Add documents in the opportunity's menu.

An opportunity read from a document starts as a draft and is not on the matrix yet. Only you know how often the work runs and how long it takes, so answer those questions under Assessment and click Save and score. Then it is scored and placed.

3. The matrix

The Opportunity Matrix places each scored opportunity by Benefit and Effort, with bubbles sized by annual saving. It splits into four groups:

• Quick Wins: high benefit, low effort. Start here.
• Big Bets: high benefit, high effort.
• Fill-ins: low benefit, low effort.
• Money Pits: low benefit, high effort.

You can sort the list By benefit, By lowest effort or By annual saving. Each opportunity also shows where its numbers came from (Typed in, From the assessment form, Read from a document or Submitted from outside), so an estimate read by AI is never mistaken for a measured one.

To see the scores in money, set Fully loaded cost per hour and Cost of a build day in Settings › Standards and templates (Cost of manual work). The opportunity then shows Cost to build, Net benefit, year 1 and Pays back in.

If a similar process already exists, the opportunity says "This looks like something you already have." and lists what is already built or in the pipeline. Have a look before anyone builds it.

4. Promote it to a project

When you decide to go ahead, choose Promote to project in the opportunity's menu. Afterwards the same menu item reads View project. See Projects.

5. Record it with a bot

A bot can read the opportunity's documents and build the process on a real machine for you. This uses Autopilot, so Autopilot must be ready first (see Autopilot), and someone must have answered the assessment.

1. In the opportunity's menu, choose Record with a bot.
2. Pick the bot under Which bot?. Bots older than version 6.6.3 are not listed until they are updated.
3. Add anything the documents do not say.
4. If the process signs in to a website, pick a saved login under Website login for … (if it asks). Logins work for websites only. A desktop application that asks for a password cannot be recorded yet, and the recording stops there.
5. Click Send to the bot. The bot picks it up on its next check-in.

The Recording box on the opportunity shows what the bot is doing, how far it has got and when it was last heard from. A recording bot reports every 15 seconds.

Approving actions

Before the bot saves, submits, creates, uploads, sends or deletes anything, it stops and lists the action under Waiting for your approval. Click Approve or Decline. Someone with operate access to the bot must answer. If you decline, or nobody answers within 15 minutes, the bot does not do it, which can end the recording.

On a test or demo system only, you can tick This is a test or demo system — approve its actions automatically. The bot then does everything without asking. Never tick this for a live system.

When it finishes

The process is saved and linked to the opportunity. Saved does not mean proven. If anyone approved an action, the bot does not replay the process (it would repeat that action), so it is left switched off for you to check and switch on. A recording that runs past about two and a half hours is marked as failed.

6. What it really saved

Once processes linked to the opportunity are running, How it actually turned out compares the Estimated, per year hours with the Measured, annualised hours from real runs, and shows the difference Against the estimate. Until there is about a month of runs it says it is too early to project a year.