The Automation Stack Audit
The exact Notion template + scoring rubric we use on week one of every engagement. By the end of this audit, you'll have a prioritized list of every workflow worth automating, scored by ROI, complexity, and risk.
If you've ever read a "where's the AI ROI hiding in my business" article and felt no closer to an answer, this playbook is the antidote. It's a structured 4-hour exercise — not a 4-week consulting project — that produces a list you can take to your engineering team or to us on Monday.
We've run this on 30+ businesses ranging from $2M to $250M ARR. The pattern is remarkably consistent: companies underestimate their automation surface area by 5–10×, and the biggest ROI is always in workflows nobody complained about because everyone had quietly accepted the manual version as "how it works."
This playbook walks you through it.
Chapter outline
- Why audit first — the case for measuring before building, with three case studies of what happens when you skip this step.
- The 8-dimension scoring rubric — volume, frequency, structure, judgment-required, error cost, tooling readiness, data accessibility, stakeholder buy-in. With concrete examples of each.
- The Notion template walkthrough — every database, every property, every formula. Copy-paste ready.
- The interview script — exactly how to interview ops, sales, marketing, and engineering to surface every workflow without missing the long tail.
- Prioritization frameworks — RICE adapted for automation. The 2×2 we use ($-value × ease-of-build). When to defer high-value-high-complexity workflows.
- Common workflows by function — checklists you can use as starter lists for sales, marketing, support, ops, and finance.
- The output document — the format we hand back to clients. What goes in. What doesn't.
- What to do with the audit — build it yourself, hire a freelancer, hire an agency, or wait. Honest guidance per scenario.
TODO: expand — this playbook will be fleshed out to a 22-page detailed walkthrough in the next iteration. In the meantime, the Notion template referenced above is available on request.
Book a call if you want us to run the audit with you.