First thing we tried to automate was the wrong thing

First thing we tried to automate: timesheets, scheduling, invoice chasing.

Those are the things that feel the most painful day to day.

Turns out that's backwards. Those tasks are annoying but they're not where the leverage is.

The leverage is in the work that creates value, scoping, writing, building frameworks, producing deliverables. That's where senior people spend most of their time, and where AI makes the biggest difference.

Once we shifted focus: a technical scoping document went from a day's work to 2 hours. A client training outline went from blank page to structured draft in 30 minutes.

The question that changed how we think about it

What work, if you could do it twice as fast and twice as well, would actually move the business?

Start there. Not with what's annoying.

The painful-but-low-value tasks are worth automating eventually. But if you start there, you spend months building automations that save 20 minutes a week on things that don't compound. Meanwhile your competitors are using AI to produce better proposals faster.

Priority matters. Start with the work that moves the needle.