When is the right time to automate your business

When to consider automation (a.k.a. The Assembly Line Test)

People always ask me when it’s the “right time” to automate. Like there’s a perfect moment. Like there’s a sign from the clouds or a Slack message from God.

But here’s the truth: you don’t automate because it's trendy. You automate because your business starts feeling like a factory floor.

The kind where every day looks like yesterday. Same tasks, same order, same buttons, same chaos disguised as control. That’s the sign. When your daily workflow starts resembling an assembly line—that’s when the magic of automation begins to make sense.

You’re not being lazy. You’re being strategic. A smart founder doesn’t scale by doing more. They scale by doing less of what doesn’t need a brain.

Think of automation like this: if you’re manually moving boxes from one end of the factory to the other every single day, there comes a point when building a conveyor belt isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.

There’s a brilliant XKCD comic that should be stapled to every founder’s forehead. It shows how much time you can justify spending to automate something—based on how often you do it.

If a task steals one minute of your day, every day, you can spend up to a full day automating it and still come out ahead within a year. If it runs five times a day? You’ve got five days of optimization runway before you break even. The more frequent the task, the more time it’s worth refining.

But if it’s something you touch once a month? Don’t bother. Go outside. Eat a croissant. Automation isn’t a religion—it’s a business decision.

This framework is nice in theory. But inside a company, the numbers get real fast. A one-minute inefficiency isn’t just your problem—it’s multiplied across heads, departments, and workdays.

Do the math:

1 minute/event × 1 event/person/day × 100 people × 240 workdays = 24,000 minutes/year = 400 hours/year

That’s 400 hours of human life lost… on one stupid, repeatable thing. Now multiply that by 10 processes. Or 50. That’s not an edge case. That’s your bottom line.

And it’s not theoretical. It’s tangible: strategy meetings never booked, customers never followed up with, creative work that never got the attention it needed—because your team was too busy pushing buttons that didn’t need pushing.

And here’s where it really hits: if your average employee makes $59,428 a year (Forbes), wasting just four hours a week on clunky workflows adds up to over $27,000 in lost productivity per year.

Across 100 people, that’s $2.74 million silently slipping through the cracks.

And this is where most teams make the mistake: they wait for chaos to hit before they fix it. By then, it’s already burning time and budget in the background like an idle app draining your battery. Automation isn’t just about saving time. It’s about not bleeding energy you didn’t know you were losing.

Step 1: Break apart every process into steps

To figure out what you can automate, you've got to understand what's happening with your current processes. Break down each task in your organization into smaller steps. Sketch a flowchart using a digital whiteboard tool like Miro, or use pen and paper to map everything out so you can get a bird's-eye view of how everything works.

How?

• Pinpoint the processes you want to assess.
• Detail all the steps within each process.
• Assign who is responsible for each step.
• List the tools needed for each process.

Step 2: Calculate the cost of running each process.

Once you've outlined all the processes, the next step is to figure out how much each one is costing you. Let's break it down using time as our unit.

How?

• Note down the time it takes to complete each process once.
• Estimate how often and over what period (e.g. 7 times a week).
• Normalize the outcome for easy process comparison (like specifying it in monthly hour terms)

Step 3: Estimate how much of the workload could be automated

Now that you've got all the process details and time metrics assess the potential for automation. Take a close look at each step and pinpoint tasks that repeat regularly and are easy to predict. These are the tasks that are perfect for automation. Here are a couple of them

• Data entry: completing forms, such as an onboarding form for a new team member, where this information goes into multiple tools.
• Predefined messages: automatic notifications and reminders. Automatic notifications and reminders, such as the anniversary of a team, are sent to a Slack channel for the entire company to view.
• Initiating Actions in other systems: for example, changing a project status in Notion and creating a folder in Google Drive.

How?

• Determine the portion of process time that would be eliminated through automation.
• Multiply this percentage by the result from step 2 to calculate the total time saved.

Step 4: Calculate ROI

Lastly, determine the break-even point and expected return on investment (ROI) for implementing the automation. Consider the time and resources required for setup, balanced against the time saved by automation.

How?

Break-even Point (in months) = Implementation Time / Total Time Saved * Month

After the break-even point, the automation starts providing a positive ROI.

Let’s do a real example

Let's streamline the process of managing new customer inquiries through automation. Imagine a scenario where customers reach out to your business through a simple online form. Once submitted, they instantly receive personalized emails guiding them through the next steps, whether it's a thank-you note or detailed information on services.

Behind the scenes, as inquiries come in, your system automatically alerts your team via Slack and updates your project database in Notion. This ensures everyone stays in the loop and can promptly engage with new clients.

Now, let's break down the ROI calculation:

Step 4: Calculate ROI

• Implementation time for automation: 30 hours
• Break-even Point (in months) = 30 hours / 14 hours saved per month ≈ 2.14 months
• After approximately 2.14 months, the automation starts providing a positive ROI.

This setup not only saves your team more time from having to respond to each initial inquiry manually but also ensures potential clients feel taken care of immediately. It’s a win-win: they get fast, relevant information, and your team frees up time to focus on the parts of your business that truly need their attention, such as personalized tasks that require human insight and interaction.

For instance, providing personalized guidance and recommendations to the client on project implementation and execution.

Keep optimizing workflows

While not every aspect of your business can be automated, there are likely significant areas where automation could greatly benefit you.

So, next time you're debating if you should automate tasks like updating customer contact protocols or exploring new project management tools—and you find yourself wondering, "Is it worth it?"—the answer is likely yes, even for a small team.

And if you're feeling unsure or overwhelmed by the process, let's chat and explore how we can lend a hand.