Your first automation project in 30 days: a practical roadmap for SMEs

You run an SME and you keep hearing about “automation” and “AI”… but in practice, where do you start without breaking your existing organisation? Most leaders don’t lack ideas, they lack a simple path from idea to a first tangible result, without jargon or a never-ending IT project.

This article gives you a very concrete method to launch a 30-day mini automation project, even if you are not technical. The goal: get a first visible win (time saved, fewer errors, more peace of mind) and lay the foundations for a sustainable approach, without taking disproportionate risks.

Why a “small” automation project already matters

For many SMEs, automation still feels abstract or intimidating. Yet improving just one process can already:

• Free up several hours per week for a key person
• Dramatically reduce manual errors
• Send a strong message to your teams: “we’re here to simplify your work”

The goal is not to automate everything, but to prove quickly that automation creates value without making your life more complex.

A well-chosen, well-framed first project allows you to:

• Test collaboration between business teams and digital tools
• Check whether your data is sufficient, or identify what’s missing
• Reassure your people by showing that AI and automation are here to help, not to replace them

You’re not deploying a big “AI programme”, but rather a small, useful, measurable project that will serve as a template for what comes next.

Step 1 – Pick the right process to automate

Choosing the right playground is critical. For a first project, aim for a process that is:

• Frequent: happens several times a week
• Repetitive: the steps are always roughly the same
• Rule-based: you can explain easily “if A then B”
• Low-risk: a mistake has no major consequences
• Visible: the benefit appears quickly (time, comfort, quality)

A few examples well suited to SMEs:

• HR: automatic confirmation emails to job applicants
• Finance: simple invoice reminders using a standard email
• Customer service: automatic acknowledgement of incoming tickets
• Sales: automatic follow-up after a quote with no answer
• Admin: automatic filing of supplier invoices received by email

Decide in 20 minutes

Bring together 2 or 3 key people and ask three simple questions:

1. Which tasks annoy us the most because they’re so repetitive?
2. On which tasks do we regularly make mistakes or forget things?
3. Where do we waste time copying and pasting data between tools?

Write each idea on a post-it (or in a shared table) and score it on three criteria from 1 (low) to 5 (high):

• Volume (how often the task happens)
• Simplicity of the rules
• Perceived impact for the team

Pick the task with the best overall score, and remember: it’s better to be too simple than too ambitious for your first project.

This diagram illustrates the logic: start from many ideas, filter them with a few simple criteria, then keep just one process for this first test.

Step 2 – Describe the process “as it works today”

Before you talk tools or AI, you need to understand how things actually happen today.

Take a sheet of paper (or a shared document) and describe:

1. Starting point: “When does the process start?”
2. Key steps: “What do we do, in which order?”
3. Tools involved: email, Excel, line-of-business software, paper…
4. Data handled: name, email, amount, date, status…
5. End result: “How do we know it’s finished?”

For example, for simple invoice reminders:

• Every Monday, the accountant opens the invoicing software
• They export overdue invoices to Excel
• They filter invoices more than 15 days late
• They copy-paste the client’s email into Outlook
• They manually type out a reminder message

The goal is to be able to explain the process out loud to someone who doesn’t know it. If you can’t, simplify it.

If you can’t explain a process in a few simple sentences, it’s too early to automate it.

This description is your base to decide where to place automation: at the start (trigger), in the middle (data transfer), or at the end (sending an email, updating a status, etc.).

Step 3 – Design a “semi-automated” version in 30 days

A good first project is not 100% automatic: it combines machine + human.

The idea:

• The tool does the repetitive work at fixed times or when an event occurs
• The human keeps control over important decisions and edge cases

A simple 30-day plan

You can structure your project over 4 weeks:

1. Week 1 – Clarify

   • Choose the process and describe it
   • Define what will be automated and what will remain manual
   • Measure the time currently spent (even roughly)

2. Week 2 – Prototype

   • Pick a simple tool (often no-code or already in your stack)
   • Build a first version on a small scope
   • Test internally with no customer impact

3. Week 3 – Test live

   • Activate the automation on a subset of real cases
   • Monitor results every day
   • Log problems and adjust

4. Week 4 – Measure and decide

   • Compare time before / after
   • Gather team feedback
   • Decide: scale up, adjust, or stop if the value isn’t there

You don’t need to talk APIs or scripts: many modern tools let you create simple automations by dragging and dropping or by connecting apps together.

Step 4 – Decide whether to add AI

For a first project, AI is optional. A plain automation can already deliver significant value.

That said, a small touch of AI can be useful in some situations:

• Automatically classifying emails by type of request
• Summarising a ticket or document to save reading time
• Drafting replies (which a human reviews before sending)

Keep one simple rule in mind:

AI prepares, humans decide.

For instance, for invoice reminders:

• The automation selects overdue invoices and prepares the reminder
• AI suggests an opening sentence adapted to the relationship
• The accountant reviews and adjusts before sending

You get the best of both worlds: the speed of machines and human judgement.

Practical section – 30-day checklist for your first project

Quick checklist

• [ ] We chose one single simple, frequent process
• [ ] We described the current process in 5–10 clear sentences
• [ ] We know who gains what (time, peace of mind, quality)
• [ ] We defined what will be automated and what remains human
• [ ] We have a simple tool to build a first prototype
• [ ] We set a limited test scope (customers, period…)
• [ ] We defined how we will measure success (time, errors, feedback)

5-question mini framework

1. What?
   • Which precise task do we want to simplify?
2. For whom?
   • Who will directly benefit from this automation?
3. How?
   • What are the 3–5 exact steps of the task today?
4. With what?
   • Which tools do we already use that could be connected?
5. From when?
   • When do we start the test, and for how long? (for example, 2 weeks)

Answer these questions in a simple shared document and you already have a very light specification that’s enough to start with your teams… or with an external partner such as Lyten Agency.

Conclusion – A small real project beats a big theoretical one

As an SME leader, your challenge is not to master the technical details of AI, but to know where to start to generate concrete value.

Key takeaways:

• Your first project should be simple, limited and visible
• Describing the current process matters more than picking the “perfect” tool
• Good automation always leaves room for human control
• You don’t need a “big IT project” to start saving time

Launching a 30-day mini project sends a clear message: you take seriously the improvement of your teams’ daily work, with fast, measurable results.

If you want support in your digital transformation, Lyten Agency helps you identify and automate your key processes. Contact us for a free assessment.