Automation Potential Agent – Find manual, repetitive process steps and assess where automation pays off
Finds manual, uniform steps, measures the automation rate and ranks candidates by potential.
What does the Automation Potential Agent do?
The Automation Potential Agent shows which steps in your processes are suitable for automation – and which are not. It finds activities that are performed often, uniformly and manually, checks whether they follow fixed rules and estimates how much working time automation would free up. It also recognizes steps that are already automated, so you see where your automation rate stands today and where the next step pays off.
Questions the Automation Potential Agent answers
“Which activities in the purchase-to-pay process are most often performed manually?”
“What is the automation rate per activity?”
“Which manual steps follow fixed rules and are suitable for automation?”
“How many hours per month go into manual invoice entry?”
How the Automation Potential Agent works
- 1
Separate manual and automated
Based on the executing users or systems, the agent distinguishes which steps people perform and which run automatically.
- 2
Find candidates
It looks for activities with high case volume, a uniform flow and little variance in the input data – typical traits of steps that automate well.
- 3
Recognize rules
It checks whether the outcome of a step depends on a few attributes, such as amount, supplier or document type – a sign that it can be expressed as a rule.
- 4
Estimate the potential
Using processing times from the data or time assumptions from the Context Hub, it estimates how much working time automation would free up and ranks the candidates accordingly.
KPIs and methods
- Automation rate
- Share of an activity’s executions that happen without human involvement.
- Manual volume
- Number of manual executions per activity and period.
- Uniformity
- How consistently an activity runs – same predecessors, successors and attributes.
- Estimated time savings
- Working time freed up by automation, based on processing times or assumptions.
A practical example
A shared service center wants to decide which steps in accounts payable to automate next. The agent shows that invoice verification for invoices with a purchase order almost always runs without deviation and depends on only a few attributes – a clear candidate. Resolving price variances, on the other hand, is varied and often relies on follow-up questions; here it recommends fixing the causes first instead of automating the step.
Matching end-to-end processes
What you get
A list of automation candidates ranked by potential, with volume, uniformity and estimated time savings, plus the current automation rate per activity – as a table, Excel file or decision paper.
What data the agent needs
A perspective with the executing user or system per activity. For time savings, processing times from the data or time assumptions stored in the Context Hub help.
Automation Potential Agent: frequently asked questions
How do you identify automation potential in processes?
Steps that automate well occur frequently, follow fixed rules, rely on structured data and rarely have exceptions. Process data shows exactly these traits: volume, variance, executing users and the attributes the flow depends on.
What is the automation rate?
The automation rate is the share of executions of an activity or process that happen without manual intervention – through batch jobs, workflows or RPA bots, for example. It shows how far a process is already automated.
Does the agent also advise against automating something?
Yes. Steps with many variants and follow-up questions are often a symptom of upstream problems. Then it usually makes more sense to fix the cause – the agent points this out instead of flagging every manual step as a candidate.
Part of Minerva 2.0
The Automation Potential Agent is an agent in Minerva, the AI assistant in Noreja. It uses the same data sources, the same choice of model – local or cloud – and the same access rights: it only reads what you are allowed to see and changes nothing in Noreja.
More agents from the library
Rework Analysis Agent
Calculates the rework rate, finds loops and repeated steps and connects them with their causes.
View agentWaiting Time Analysis Agent
Finds the time in which nothing happens: idle time between steps, bottlenecks and the reasons why work sits still.
View agentRoot Cause Analysis Agent
Answers the question of why: traces dependencies in the causal process graph and explains problems with evidence.
View agentSee what the Automation Potential Agent finds in your process data
In a demo we show you what answers the agent delivers on one of your processes – with numbers, reasoning and sources.
Book a demo