A customer fills out your enquiry form. Someone copies the details into a spreadsheet, forwards the email to a colleague and adds a reminder to follow up. Each step is small. Together, they create a process that depends on someone remembering what happens next.
Business process automation connects those steps so information moves, work reaches the right person and exceptions remain visible. The best starting point is usually a frequent task with clear rules and a result you can check.
The following 15 examples show what that looks like across sales, finance, customer service and operations. They are workflow designs you can adapt, rather than claims about results achieved by a particular business.
One enquiry, a complete handoff
- 01ReceiveCapture the request once.
- 02AssignGive one person ownership.
- 03Follow throughCreate a task with a due date.
What counts as business process automation
Business process automation uses software to carry out repeatable business activities. A process might cross several systems: a form captures a request, a CRM stores it, a task system assigns it and an email confirms receipt. IBM describes BPA as software-based automation of complex, repetitive business processes. Read IBM's explanation.
You do not need AI for every process. If a decision follows an explicit rule, such as assigning enquiries by postcode, ordinary automation may be sufficient. AI becomes useful when a step involves interpreting an email, extracting information from a document or preparing a response.
Sales and customer onboarding
1. Route new enquiries to the right person
When a form is submitted, validate the required fields, check for an existing customer record and assign an owner using service type or territory. Create a follow-up task and acknowledge receipt.
If no routing rule matches, send the enquiry to a named fallback owner. Measure the time between submission and the first useful response, alongside the percentage of enquiries left unassigned.
2. Turn an accepted proposal into an onboarding checklist
When a proposal reaches your agreed acceptance state, create the project, assign an account owner and request the information needed to begin. Use different checklists for different services.
Define the start condition carefully: a verbal yes, a signed agreement and a cleared deposit are different events. Keep unusual contract requirements with the account owner. Measure how long it takes to collect a complete onboarding pack.
3. Prepare quotes from an approved price list
A salesperson selects the product, quantity and delivery requirements. The workflow calculates a draft using an approved price list and routes it for review before sending.
Discounts outside the agreed range and nonstandard delivery terms should take a separate approval path. Track quote preparation time and corrections, including mistakes that reach the customer.
4. Create follow-up tasks for unanswered proposals
After a defined interval, check whether the prospect has replied or the opportunity has changed status. If it is still open, create a task for the salesperson with the proposal and conversation attached.
Stop reminders when the prospect declines, responds or asks not to be contacted. Measure overdue follow-ups rather than treating the number of reminders as a success metric.
Finance and purchasing
5. Route supplier invoices for approval
Capture an invoice, match it to a supplier and check whether its invoice number already exists. Compare it with the relevant purchase order where one is available, then send it to the correct approver.
Missing references, mismatched amounts and changes to payment details need explicit review. Keep payment authorisation as a separate step. Measure handling time and the proportion of invoices needing correction.
An invoice needs two routes
Supplier, invoice number and purchase order agree.
Duplicate, missing reference or changed payment details.
6. Send appropriate payment reminders
Use invoice due dates and current payment status to identify overdue accounts. Before a reminder goes out, recheck that the invoice remains unpaid and is not marked as disputed.
Route disputed invoices to the account owner. A useful workflow must also handle payments that arrive between the scheduled check and the send action. Track incorrect reminders as well as outstanding balances.
7. Collect missing expense information
When an expense is submitted, check for the receipt, date, amount and business purpose. Return incomplete submissions with a specific request, then route complete ones to the approver.
Do not treat a populated field as proof that an expense is valid. Measure how often staff have to chase missing information and how many submissions require a second review.
8. Raise replenishment requests
When stock falls below a defined threshold, prepare a replenishment request using stock on hand, committed orders and outstanding supplier deliveries.
Initially, have a person approve the order. This helps catch discontinued products, unusual demand and unreliable inventory records. Track stockouts and duplicate orders alongside the time spent preparing requests.
Service delivery and internal operations
9. Assign incoming support requests
Classify requests using structured fields such as product and issue type, then create a ticket with an owner and due time. Free-text requests can go through an AI-assisted classification step if rules alone are insufficient.
Unclear requests should enter a review queue. Measure reassignment rates and time to first meaningful response, so faster routing does not conceal poor routing.
10. Confirm and manage appointments
After a booking is confirmed, send the agreed details and create reminders tied to the booking record. Rescheduling or cancellation should update those reminders automatically.
Use the booking system as the source of truth for availability and time zones. Measure duplicate bookings, missed appointments and manual scheduling work.
11. Assemble a weekly operations report
At a scheduled time, collect agreed metrics from the relevant systems and prepare a report with links back to the underlying records.
Show missing or delayed data explicitly. A failed import should never look like zero sales. Measure preparation time and discrepancies against the source systems before expanding the report.
12. Create an employee onboarding task list
Once a start date is confirmed, assign equipment, induction and access-request tasks to the responsible people. Make dependencies visible so equipment preparation does not wait for an unrelated task.
Require authorised approval for access permissions. Track readiness before the start date and unresolved tasks after the employee joins.
13. Process access removal requests
An authorised departure request can trigger account-disabling tasks, equipment-return reminders and ownership transfers for shared work.
Confirm identity, effective time and each system's completion status. A task marked complete is insufficient evidence that access was actually removed. Measure outstanding accounts and failed removal actions.
14. Collect documents through a shared request list
Create a checklist of required documents for each job or customer. Record receipt against the checklist and remind the owner when specific items remain missing.
Check whether an uploaded document is the correct version and belongs to the right request. Track completeness and chase time. A client portal can provide a shared view when email threads become difficult to manage.
15. Route completed work for customer approval
When a deliverable is ready, create a review request with the version, reviewer and due date. Record the decision and return requested changes to the responsible team member.
Keep approval tied to the exact version reviewed. Silence should not become approval unless your agreed process explicitly allows it. Measure revision cycles and time spent waiting for a decision.
Choose the first workflow by its failure points
Look for a task that happens often, has a clear owner and can be checked against an existing record. Avoid starting with a process whose rules change every time someone asks about it.
Before building, write down the trigger, required information, expected result and exception owner. Then run a small pilot with normal records, missing fields, duplicates and a temporary system failure. Check whether retrying a failed step creates a second record or sends the same message twice.
Use the automation ROI worksheet to compare the work removed with the review and maintenance introduced. If the process requires interpreting messy information, the AI automation guide explains where AI can fit.
A good first automation has three things
Enough volume to make improvement worthwhile.
You can tell whether the task was completed correctly.
Someone handles exceptions and keeps the process working.
Start with one complete process
One workflow with reliable handoffs is more useful than ten disconnected shortcuts. Choose a process, document what happens when it fails and give someone responsibility for keeping it working.
Anteomnio's business process automation service starts with the existing work and its exceptions. Bring one repeated task to a project conversation, along with the systems involved and a few typical examples.
Sources and calculation notes
The 15 workflows are original suggested designs, not a survey or a claim about measured customer outcomes. Any task counts in examples describe a process, not market statistics.
- IBM — What is business process automation? — The definition of business process automation and its use across business activities.
External references checked on 27 October 2026.