Process Before Platform: Fix the Workflow Before You Automate

Automation doesn’t fix chaos… it multiplies it.

We’ve all walked through an expo hall and heard the sales pitch for a new tool that promises to solve every operational problem. Have a bottleneck? Automate it. Need more capacity? Automate your intake and free up staff time.

But in government and business, technology isn’t a quick fix. The promise of automation—speed, consistency, fewer errors—only becomes reality when the underlying process is sound. If the process is unclear or inefficient, automation simply speeds up the confusion.

Before you automate, you must understand and streamline the process itself.

Start with Business Process Improvement

Business Process Improvement (BPI) is the discipline of identifying, analyzing, and improving existing processes to optimize performance. That means aligning people, policy, and purpose to deliver better outcomes for internal and external stakeholders.

Ask:

• Where do things slow down?

• Where do handoffs break?

• Where are we duplicating effort?

• Where are the gaps or unclear steps?

There are many BPI tools that can help you see these issues clearly. You don’t need to invent a new method—use what already works.

Map Before You Move: Tools That Work Anywhere

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Many organizations already use frameworks that help clarify processes and relationships. These tools make inefficiencies visible and collaboration easier.

Here are a few that work well across public organizations:

• Process Mapping:  A visual walkthrough of the steps in your process. It reveals delays, unclear handoffs, and extra steps that don’t add value.

• Stakeholder Analysis:  Identifies everyone involved in or affected by the process. This helps you plan with the right voices at the table.

• RACI Matrix:  Defines who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed at each step, minimizing confusion and rework.

• Customer Journey Mapping:  Shows the experience from the customer’s point of view—taxpayer, applicant, or constituent. It highlights pain points you may not see internally.

• Together, these frameworks build shared understanding of how work flows, where value is added, and where waste occurs.

Common categories of waste to look for include:

• Redundant reviews or approvals

• Rework due to unclear guidance

• Waiting or idle time between handoffs

• Overprocessing—doing more than what’s required

• Underutilized staff expertise

Once these inefficiencies are visible, you can make targeted improvements—often without any new technology at all.

Standard Work: The Foundation of Scale

After you’ve defined the best way to complete a task, write it down. This becomes your standard work—the agreed-upon method everyone follows.

Standard work ensures:

• Consistency

• Quality

• Clear expectations

• A stable starting point for improvement

Far from limiting innovation, standard work supports it. When staff don’t have to guess at the basics, they have more space to solve problems and improve service.

A Real-World Example

Maria manages a small, six-person department responsible for handling customer complaints. Her team oversees the full lifecycle of each case, including intake, logging, resolution, and reporting. Most issues fall into three main categories:

• Financial hardships

• Billing disputes

• Refund requests

  
  

Maria’s team responds to calls and emails, investigates each issue, and, when necessary, places an account hold while the matter is reviewed. If a refund is warranted, they process it. Once resolved, the escalation is documented and included in monthly reports.

Because the team is small and lacks administrative support, the intake process became time-consuming. Staff found themselves spending valuable time on initial data entry rather than on resolving issues, which increased both the workload per case and the time customers waited for a final resolution.

To address this, Maria partnered with her organization’s IT department to automate the intake process, allowing customers to submit requests online and eliminating the need for staff-led intake interviews. However, because the process had not been fully mapped before automation, the solution created several unintended downstream effects. Customers often submitted incomplete or unclear information, which required additional follow-up. Some requests were misrouted or lacked the context staff previously gathered during live intake conversations. As a result, investigations took longer, errors increased, and overall resolution times slowed, even more than before the automation was introduced.

In the end, the well-intentioned change highlighted the importance of understanding and mapping a process before automating it, ensuring that technology enhances workflow rather than inadvertently complicating it.

Realizing this, Maria brought her team together. They mapped the entire workflow, step by step. Together, they:

• Identified the exact information needed for each type of request

• Determined when account holds were appropriate

• Set required fields for the online form

• Updated their standard operating procedures

• Added a “human in the loop” review to confirm accuracy before processing

After these changes, the automation finally worked the way it was intended—speeding up service instead of slowing it down.

Technology didn’t solve the problem. The process did.

Scale Smarter: Your Next Step

If you’re considering automation or a platform upgrade, start with the process. A short Process Mapping Workshop can uncover pain points, sharpen roles, and give you a clear plan for responsible automation.

Ready to scale smarter?Email us at info@pdsgroupllc.com to discuss how we can support your next step.