The Operations Automation Playbook

Your ops team is drowning in manual work. Every new customer adds 40 hours/month of repetitive tasks. You can't hire fast enough.

The answer isn't more people. It's better infrastructure.

The 10x Automation Framework

Phase 1: Audit (Week 1)

Map everything your ops team does:

interface OperationalProcess {
  name: string;
  frequency: 'hourly' | 'daily' | 'weekly' | 'monthly';
  avgTime: number; // minutes
  volume: number; // times per period
  complexity: 'low' | 'medium' | 'high';
  automatable: boolean;
  roi: number; // hours saved per month
}

Example audit results:

Total time saved: 270+ hours/month

Phase 2: Quick Wins (Week 2-3)

Start with high-ROI, low-complexity automations:

1. Email → CRM Data Entry

// Zapier/Make.com workflow
const workflow = {
  trigger: 'Email received with subject "New Customer"',
  actions: [
    'Extract data with GPT-4',
    'Validate against schema',
    'Create CRM record',
    'Send Slack notification'
  ],
  fallback: 'Human review queue'
};

// Result: 95% automated, 8min → 15sec per record

2. Automated Report Generation

# Daily report automation
def generate_daily_report():
    # Pull data from multiple sources
    metrics = fetch_metrics([
        'revenue', 'signups', 'churn',
        'support_tickets', 'nps'
    ])

    # Generate insights with LLM
    insights = analyze_trends(metrics)

    # Create formatted report
    report = create_report(metrics, insights)

    # Distribute to stakeholders
    send_slack_report(report)
    send_email_report(report)

# Result: 2hrs → 5min, runs automatically

3. Smart Support Routing

// Route tickets based on content analysis
async function routeTicket(ticket: Ticket) {
  // Analyze with LLM
  const analysis = await llm.analyze(ticket.content, {
    extractIntent: true,
    detectUrgency: true,
    identifyProduct: true,
    estimateComplexity: true
  });

  // Route to best agent
  const agent = findBestAgent({
    expertise: analysis.product,
    availability: getCurrentShift(),
    workload: getAgentWorkload(),
    priority: analysis.urgency
  });

  await assignTicket(ticket.id, agent.id);
  await notifyAgent(agent, ticket, analysis);
}

// Result: 90% correctly routed, 40% faster resolution

Phase 3: Complex Workflows (Week 4-6)

Customer Onboarding Automation

const onboardingWorkflow = {
  trigger: 'Deal marked closed-won in CRM',

  steps: [
    // Immediate
    'Create customer account',
    'Generate API keys',
    'Send welcome email with credentials',

    // Day 1
    'Schedule kickoff call',
    'Create project in PM tool',
    'Assign customer success manager',

    // Day 2
    'Send implementation guide',
    'Create Slack Connect channel',
    'Provision infrastructure',

    // Week 1
    'Check integration progress',
    'Send check-in email',
    'Schedule training session'
  ],

  monitoring: {
    trackProgress: true,
    alertOnStuck: true,
    escalateAfter: '48 hours'
  }
};

// Result: 45min → 5min human time, 80% automated

Real Results

Case Study: B2B SaaS Company

Before:

• 5-person ops team
• 60+ hours/week on manual tasks
• Scaling blocked by operational capacity

After (12 weeks):

• Same 5-person team
• 8 hours/week on manual tasks
• Handling 3x the customer volume

Time saved: 260 hours/month Cost savings: $156K/year ROI: 4.2x in year one

The Automation Stack

Category 1: No-Code Tools

• Zapier / Make.com: Workflow automation
• Airtable / Notion: Database + workflows
• Calendly: Scheduling automation

Category 2: AI-Powered

• OpenAI / Anthropic: Document processing, analysis
• ElevenLabs: Voice automation
• Segment: Event tracking automation

Category 3: Custom Infrastructure

• n8n: Self-hosted workflow automation
• Temporal: Complex workflow orchestration
• Custom APIs: Business-specific logic

Choosing the Right Tool

Use no-code when:
✓ Standard integrations exist
✓ Simple logic (under 10 steps)
✓ Low volume (under 1000 runs/day)

Build custom when:
✓ Complex business logic
✓ High volume (>10K runs/day)
✓ Need fine-grained control
✓ Security/compliance requirements

Common Mistakes

1. Automating broken processes

• Fix the process first, then automate
• 10x faster broken process = 10x more problems

2. Over-engineering early

• Start with simple workflows
• Add complexity only when needed

3. No error handling

• Automation will fail
• Build monitoring + fallbacks

4. Ignoring edge cases

• 80/20 rule: Automate the 80%
• Keep humans in the loop for edge cases

What's Next

We'll cover advanced topics:

• Building custom AI agents for ops
• Workflow orchestration at scale
• Cost optimization strategies
• Measuring automation ROI

Want to 10x your ops capacity? We've automated 100+ operational workflows for high-growth companies. Book a call to discuss your automation opportunities.