The best framework for a company-wide automation strategy

In today’s world, there is an incredible amount possible with AI and automation. You are probably hearing about it everywhere.

But the majority of what you hear is not relevant to your business at all. While you are being flooded with success stories and bold claims, often the practical translation to your own organization is missing.

Ultimately, you still do not clearly know where the opportunities lie, what is technically feasible, or how to implement this new technology wisely.

And I do not blame you for that, at least not until you have read this article. Because afterwards, you will understand exactly which framework we use to build a clear, organization-wide strategy for the deployment of AI and process automation together with our clients.

Our Framework

We will guide you step by step through our process and explain how we apply this in practice. It is a lot of information, but worth it if you want to achieve serious results.

Step 1: Map the Business Processes

The first step is immediately one of the most important. We start by fully mapping the business processes from start to finish.

We organize physical sessions and interviews, often over one or several days, during which we walk through the entire organization with the management team and then dive deeper from the perspective of the different teams.

We put everything on display: processes, pain points, time spent per task, tools used, dependencies, and more.

The goal is to create a detailed “wireframe” of the company, so that even someone without prior knowledge understands how the company functions by simply reading the document.

The key here is objectivity. We provide an unbiased perspective, and our curiosity ensures that we ask the right questions. We do not settle for “that’s just how we do it” without context.

Whether you carry this out internally or with our guidance, this step is crucial. The better you do this, the smoother the next steps will go.

Step 2: Identify the Opportunities

Once the processes are mapped out, we use our technical expertise to analyze them and identify potential areas for automation or optimization.

That sounds simple, but this is where real technical knowledge becomes essential. Without that knowledge, it is difficult to distinguish what is feasible and what is not.

The goal of this phase, whether you do it internally or together with a partner like Stonewell, is to gather all potential opportunities without judging or filtering too early. Evaluation comes later; right now it’s about collecting raw data.

Step 3: Use a Value–Effort Matrix

Next, we organize all potential opportunities into a Value–Effort Matrix.

This matrix helps to understand the balance between the added value (value) and the effort or risk (effort) of each idea.
Opportunities with high value and low effort are, of course, the biggest winners and deserve priority.

Additionally, the matrix makes visible which ideas seem attractive but have little impact or are too risky. This prevents you from making wrong investments and focuses your resources on the initiatives with the highest returns.

Step 4: Build the Roadmap

After the analysis, it is time to turn the ideas into a concrete action plan.

The valuable opportunities, whether they require little or a lot of effort, are further developed. In this step, we essentially add reality to the concepts.

On paper, an idea may seem fantastic, but in practice, development risks or change management can be complex.
For example: an idea may require that your team starts working in a completely new way.

These factors influence the priorities. We enrich each idea with details such as feasibility, estimated ROI, and implementation risk.

Then we create a clear roadmap: a visual overview of the short- and long-term goals over a period of about 12 months.

Step 5: Develop the Solutions

At this point, you have a complete strategy and a clear overview of all opportunities within the organization.

The next step is to turn the selected ideas into a detailed execution plan, a strong basis for development.

We have written a separate article on how to approach this; you can read that here.