Many of us in the process automation world believe that more automation is always better—and that the rest of the world should intuitively understand and agree with us. Often, this mentality can be perceived as an acknowledgement that change is always good. A process engineer with a workflow can be likened to a lawyer with a contract—sometimes, we just don’t know when to leave a project alone.

At IFS, our experience tells us that just having a good process automation system does not guarantee a successful project. Even if the end result seems to align with the spreadsheet used to justify the project, the benefits can become obsolete without a couple of key factors. What drives real benefit is having the internal stakeholders most affected by, and usually, most critical to the process automation, understand why the effort is going to be good for the company, good for the clients of the firm, and most of all, good for them.

Every automation project starts with a justification spreadsheet that shows the returns that are expected, along with the project expense. This document discusses some of the issues and perceptions that cause and contribute to the project not returning the anticipated ROI as represented in that original spreadsheet.