Office automation is an old phrase for a current problem: an administrator doing the same job by hand every week because nobody ever wrote it down as a rule. The programs sold for it range from a form that files itself to a full workflow engine, and the choice between them matters far less than which jobs you point them at. This page is about that choice: which of an office administration's manual jobs repay being automated, which are cheaper left alone, and what the software has to keep once the job is running without a person.
How to automate office tasks: the three jobs worth doing first
The renewal reminder, because a contract date is a rule and a rule is exactly what software is good at. The starter and leaver routine, because it is the same eleven steps every time and the cost of missing one is a person with no desk or an account nobody closed. And the recurring request, the supplies order or the room fix, because routing it is clerical and recording it is the part with value. All three share one property: the steps do not change with the case, which is the only honest test of whether a job should be automated at all.
How to automate office work without writing code
Write the job down first, in the order it actually happens, with the person who does each step. Most jobs fail to automate because nobody could state them, not because no product could run them. Then move the parts that are a rule into whatever product already holds the record, and leave the parts that need a judgement to a person with a prompt. A rule with an exception queue beats a rule that pretends there are no exceptions, and the exception queue is where you find out what the job really was.
Office automation tools, and what the category actually contains
Four kinds, and the labels overlap. Forms and capture, which turn a request into a record. Workflow, which moves that record through steps with owners and due dates. Document assembly, which renders the same letter or checklist from stored fields. And scheduling, which fires a rule on a date. Most small offices need capture and a date rule and buy a workflow engine, then use it as a form. The paperless office is the same four tools pointed at whatever is still arriving on paper.
The jobs to leave alone
Anything you do twice a year, because you will spend longer maintaining the automation than doing the job. Anything where the decision is the work, such as choosing a supplier or handling a complaint. And anything whose inputs arrive in a different shape every time, because that is a person reading, not a rule running. Automating those is how an office ends up maintaining software instead of running an office.
What has to be kept once nobody is watching
A record of what the automation did and when, readable by somebody who did not build it. The US National Archives puts this as an audit trail and usability: a record has to be complete, unaltered, and findable and readable again later. An automated job with no trail is worse than the manual one it replaced, because when it silently stops there is nothing to show how long it has been stopped.
Questions people ask about office automation programs
What is the difference between office automation programs and office automation software?
None that matters to a buyer. Both phrases cover the same four kinds of tool: capture, workflow, document assembly and scheduling.
What are good office automation software examples for a small office?
The ones already inside the products you pay for: the form on the contract register, the date rule on the calendar, the template in the document store. A new product is worth buying only when the job crosses two of them.
How do we know an automation is still working?
Read its own record on a fixed day each month. An automation nobody checks is a rule that has been failing for an unknown length of time.
Does automating a job mean we stop keeping the paperwork?
No. It usually means the record becomes better, not absent. Anything a regulator, an auditor or an insurer might ask for still has to be retrievable in a readable form.