I've seen teams rush to automate broken processes and wonder why the results disappoint. The pattern is always the same: manual chaos gets replaced by automated chaos — faster, but still wrong.
The 15% Accuracy Story
At Rhiti Group, record-management inaccuracies were a recurring headache. Instead of jumping to automation, I documented every recurring issue as a Standard Operating Procedure with clear access controls and reporting routines. Accuracy improved by approximately 15% — before any major automation was deployed.
The SOP → Automation Pipeline
- Identify — Catalog recurring manual issues and their root causes
- Document — Write SOPs with step-by-step instructions and ownership
- Control — Implement access limits and validation checkpoints
- Automate — Only then, script the standardized steps
- Monitor — KPI dashboards to catch drift back to old habits
Lean Six Sigma Connection
My Green Belt training reinforced this: DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) maps directly to the SOP-first approach. Automation is the "Improve" step — not the starting point.