Automation Opportunity Review

Find the work your employees should not have to be doing manually

Most credit unions have operational processes that could be automated.

The challenge is knowing where to start.

The Automation Opportunity Review is a focused engagement designed to identify repetitive, manual, error-prone, or unnecessarily complicated processes within your credit union and turn them into a practical, prioritized automation roadmap.

This is not a broad technology assessment or an audit.

The focus is simple:

Where is your staff spending time on work that technology could handle better?

What we look for

During the review, I look for opportunities such as:

Repetitive data entry
Moving information between systems
Manually downloading, renaming, or distributing reports
Spreadsheet-dependent processes
Recurring document handling
Manual quality-control or review procedures
Email-driven workflows
Repetitive approvals and notifications
Tasks involving Fiserv systems that require the same steps again and again
Processes that depend too heavily on one employee knowing how something works
Microsoft 365 or SharePoint processes that could be streamlined
Appropriate opportunities to use AI within an operational workflow

The goal is not to automate everything.

Some processes should remain manual. Others may not provide enough value to justify the effort.

The purpose of the review is to identify the opportunities where automation is most likely to make a meaningful difference.

How the review works

1. Prepare

Before the review begins, I provide a short preparation worksheet to help identify likely areas for discussion.

It prompts your team to think about questions such as:

Which recurring processes frustrate employees most?
Where is information manually re-entered?
Which reports require recurring manual handling?
Which processes rely heavily on spreadsheets?
Which tasks consume more staff time than they should?
Which automation ideas have been discussed but never implemented?

You do not need to have the answers before we begin. The worksheet simply helps us make better use of our time together.

2. Discover

We begin with a kickoff conversation about your credit union, your systems, and the operational areas where there may be opportunities.

The standard review includes up to three 45–60 minute discovery sessions with selected process owners, employees, or department leaders.

Together, we focus on up to three operational areas or workflows where automation may provide meaningful value.

The people closest to a process are often the ones who know where the unnecessary work is hiding.

3. Identify opportunities

I look for processes that are:

Repetitive
Time-consuming
Prone to human error
Difficult to track
Dependent on manual handoffs
Based on predictable rules
Requiring information to move between systems
Creating unnecessary delays for employees or members

When useful, this may include observing how a process is performed or reviewing relevant systems at a practical level.

The review is focused on understanding the process and identifying opportunities. It is not a comprehensive technical assessment of your systems or configuration.

4. Prioritize

Not every automation opportunity should be tackled first.

Each identified opportunity is evaluated based on factors such as:

Potential time savings
Reduction in errors or risk
Employee impact
Member impact
Implementation complexity
Technical feasibility
Dependencies on vendors or other systems
Expected value compared with the effort required

The result is a practical list of what I would recommend addressing first.

What you receive

At the end of the review, your credit union receives an Automation Opportunity Roadmap containing:

A summary of the processes reviewed
Identified automation opportunities
A description of the current problem or manual work
The potential benefit of automating each process
A preliminary assessment of relative implementation complexity
Recommended priorities
Suggested next steps

Opportunities are grouped into categories such as:

Quick Wins

Relatively simple improvements that can provide useful results quickly.

High-Value Opportunities

Projects with the potential to create significant operational value.

Larger Initiatives

Worthwhile projects that may require additional planning, integration, or vendor involvement.

Not Recommended for Automation

Processes where automation is unlikely to provide enough benefit to justify the complexity.

The roadmap is intended to help you decide what is worth pursuing next.

It is not a detailed technical design or implementation specification. Formal project plans, detailed cost estimates, technical architecture, vendor coordination, and implementation work can be scoped separately when needed.

The findings meeting

After the roadmap is complete, we meet to review the findings and discuss the recommendations.

I will identify the opportunities I believe are most worthwhile and answer a practical question:

If I were responsible for your automation program, what would I do first?

That gives your team a clear starting point rather than simply a list of possibilities.

What happens afterward?

There is no requirement to hire me to implement the recommendations.

Your credit union can use the roadmap internally, work with another provider, or engage me to build selected solutions.

If you would like me to continue, we can:

Implement an individual automation as a defined project
Scope a larger initiative identified during the review
Work through several priorities over time
Establish an ongoing Fractional Automation Partner engagement

The review is designed to be useful even if you decide not to proceed with additional work.

Investment

$1,500 fixed fee

The standard Automation Opportunity Review includes:

Pre-review preparation worksheet
One kickoff/discovery session
Up to three 45–60 minute discovery sessions with process owners, employees, or department leaders
Focused review of up to three operational areas or workflows
Identification and prioritization of automation opportunities
Written Automation Opportunity Roadmap
One findings and recommendations meeting

The standard scope is designed for a focused review of a smaller or midsize credit union rather than an exhaustive analysis of every process in the organization.

If a broader review is needed, we can define an expanded scope before beginning.

Who this is for

The Automation Opportunity Review is particularly useful when:

You know your employees are doing too much work manually but are unsure where to begin
You have a growing list of process frustrations but no automation roadmap
Your IT team does not have time to investigate every operational improvement
You want an outside perspective from someone familiar with credit-union operations
You are considering an ongoing automation initiative but want to identify the highest-value opportunities first
You want to get more value from Microsoft 365, SharePoint, Fiserv systems, or other technology you already have

A practical place to start

You do not need an automation strategy before beginning.

You do not even need a list of projects.

You just need employees doing work that feels repetitive, cumbersome, unnecessarily manual, or harder than it ought to be.

That is usually enough to start finding opportunities.