Are You Trapped in an Automation Desert Without Realizing It?
You know a food desert leaves communities without access to fresh, healthy food. But what about an Automation Desert? This is what happens when a business is starved of efficiency, relying on outdated manual processes while opportunities for automation go unnoticed.
The problem? Most business owners don’t even know they’re in one.
If your team is buried in repetitive tasks, if scaling your business feels impossible, or if employees are constantly frustrated by inefficiencies, chances are you’re operating in an Automation Desert.
But here’s the good news: you don’t have to stay stuck.
How to Identify Hidden Manual Work That’s Holding You Back
Many business owners want to automate, but they don’t know where to start. The secret? Ask the right people.
1. Start with HR: Where Is Turnover the Highest?
One of the most overlooked indicators of manual inefficiencies is high employee turnover.
Talk to HR and ask:
✔ Which positions experience the most turnover?
✔ Why are people leaving? Is it just an entry-level role, or is the work itself frustrating?
✔ Are employees leaving due to burnout from repetitive, unfulfilling tasks?
➡ If employees leave because of mindless, repetitive work, that’s a red flag for automation opportunities.
📌 Example: If your customer service reps spend half their day copying and pasting emails instead of solving real problems, that’s a prime candidate for automation.
2. Review Job Descriptions: What Are People Supposed to Be Doing?
Compare job descriptions with what employees actually do on a daily basis. Look for:
✅ Repetitive, rules-based tasks (data entry, approvals, scheduling).
✅ Processes that require multiple people to complete (manual hand-offs, document reviews).
✅ Tasks that generate frequent complaints (slow, tedious, error-prone work).
➡ If the job description says “assist with customer onboarding” but in reality, the job is uploading documents manually all day, you’ve found an automation opportunity.
📌 Example: Your sales team is supposed to focus on closing deals—but instead, they’re spending hours manually entering leads into a CRM. That’s wasted time that automation could fix.
3. Follow the Paper Trail: What Needs to Be Digitized?
If your business still relies on paper forms, emailed spreadsheets, or manual approvals, you’re sitting on a goldmine of automation potential.
Look for:
📄 Forms that require manual data entry.
📧 Approval processes that require emails back and forth.
📊 Reports that are manually compiled instead of generated automatically.
➡ If your company still prints forms, scans them, and emails them—you’re wasting hours on something that can be done in seconds.
📌 Example: Instead of chasing signatures via email, use automated approval workflows in Power Automate to digitally route documents in seconds.
4. Ask Employees: What’s the Most Frustrating Part of Their Day?
Your team knows exactly where inefficiencies exist—but they might not know automation is the solution.
Ask:
💬 What’s the most annoying, time-consuming part of your day?
💬 Which tasks do you wish you could “just push a button” to complete?
💬 What takes longer than it should because of manual work?
➡ If employees dread a task, there’s a good chance it can be automated.
📌 Example: If your HR team manually tracks PTO requests, employees and managers waste time on emails that could be automated with a simple form and approval workflow.
5. Check for Data Silos: Where Do People Copy & Paste?
If employees spend time copying and pasting data from one system to another, your business is wasting valuable time.
Look for:
🔄 Data that needs to be entered into multiple systems manually.
🔄 Spreadsheets that employees update by hand instead of pulling from a live system.
🔄 Reports that require “stitching together” multiple sources of information.
➡ If employees copy the same information into three different systems, you need automation.
📌 Example: If your HR team manually tracks PTO requests, employees and managers waste time on emails that could be automated with a simple form and approval workflow.
Breaking Free From the Automation Desert
If your business is stuck with repetitive manual work, the solution isn’t more employees—it’s automation.
✅ Higher efficiency – Teams focus on meaningful work, not mindless tasks.
✅ Scalability – Growth no longer means adding more manual labor.
✅ Lower costs – Fewer mistakes, faster execution, better resource allocation.
✅ Happier employees – Less burnout, more job satisfaction.
✅ Better customer experiences – Faster response times, seamless interactions.
Your business doesn’t have to be stuck in an Automation Desert.
At Citizen’s Consulting Group, we help businesses find and automate inefficient processes using tools like Power Automate and other low-code solutions. 🚀 Ready to escape the Automation Desert?
Contact us now and find out exactly how you can escape those tedious, error-prone processes—before they become permanent roadblocks. Because when you automate first, you thrive faster!