10 Business Tasks You Can Automate Today

Considering implementing some automation?

Power Automate speeds up workflows, improves employee satisfaction, and generally frees you and your team up to focus on more creative and constructive endeavors. 

So if you’re ready to get some quick wins with automating repetitive tasks, here are some suggestions as to where to get started.

1. Email Routing Done in a Flash

Email can be an organization time suck. Automation is a quick win.

Set up automatic handling of incoming emails, sorting, routing, even extracting attachments, so nothing slips through the cracks. In one study, organizations automated email routing and invoice handling, removing the equivalent of two full-time roles and saving over $380,000 in three years.

2. Invoice Processing - Fast and Frugal

Free up accounting personnel to do more important tasks than manually entering invoices.

Manual invoice tasks can cost up to $16 per invoice, automation via Power Automate drives that down to about $3, cutting costs by 81%, while speeding up processing by 80–90%.

3. HR Onboarding - From Weeks to Minutes

Onboarding costs time and money for the new employee and your HR personnel. In smaller organizations, management time gets sucked into onboarding tasks.

Power Automate can trigger welcome emails, set up accounts, assign training, right when the new hire is added. 

Here are a couple of hard statistics on time and money saved: one organization, Zelis saved approximately $150,000/year just by automating onboarding steps. Another global company trimmed onboarding times by 80%.

4. Approval Workflows - No More Lost Requests

Most organizations have approval chains, and with those chains come inevitable bottlenecks. But automating again has the potential to increase efficiency here, without compromising the approval process itself.

Build multi-step approval chains (think leave requests or document sign-offs) with reminders at every stage. A Battleground healthcare example cut hiring vacancy approval time dramatically, while others report that reminders and tracking improved compliance and drastically reduced bottlenecks. One other company reported: Automated reminders mean no more forgotten approval emails—and “a four-stage approval process with the uppermost level only being bothered if it’s been approved by three other people”.

5. Routing Help-Desk Tickets - Set It and Forget It

Lots of organizations use a help desk ticketing system, with various headaches around the software and the process. Power Automate is the future.

Switching from manual ticket routing to automated pathways, like detecting a form submission or email, and pushing it into SharePoint or Teams, handled thousands of tickets seamlessly. Automation can also resolve up to a quarter of all tickets with near-zero cost.

6. Document Handling at Scale

While every industry handles documents, some process are very heavy. 

Take US Acute Care Solutions: processing 20 million medical records yearly used to be manual. Power Automate trimmed 100,000 hours of that work, no new hires needed.

Keep in mind that automation also eliminates inaccuracies which stem from manual entry. Correcting such errors costs organizations. Automate and eliminate the double-work of correcting data entry errors.

7. Meeting Reminders and Follow-Ups on Autopilot

Power Automate can connect Outlook or Teams calendars to automatically send reminders before meetings, share prep materials, and even trigger follow-up tasks afterward. This prevents no-shows, boosts preparedness, and keeps projects moving. A study by Microsoft found that automated meeting reminders reduced missed meetings by up to 30%, while automated follow-up tasks improved project completion rates significantly.

8. Massive Automation, Massive Impact

Automation benefits accumulate. In general, enterprise automation has a payback period of under six months!

A composite Forrester analysis shows businesses see an average ROI of 248% over three years. Companies saved 200 hours per employee per year in high-volume tasks like data entry or document processing, and yielded $39.85 million NPV.

9. HR Approvals, Reminders, and Calendars - All Automated

HR teams keep busy schedules and approvals, reminders and calendaring. When done well, handling leave requests, sending notifications and synching calendars keeps an organization operating swiftly and efficiently, even through peak vacay times like summer or the holiday season.

But such tasks can be incredibly time consuming. 

Power Automate can automate leave request approvals, notify managers, and sync calendars in real time. This speeds things up, ensures transparency, and dramatically reduces HR admin time.

10. Smart Data Entry Across Systems - Zero Duplication Needed

Most organizations still use multiple system solutions, such as Salesforce, SharePoint, Excel documents, PDF email attachments, etc. 

With Power Automate you avoid manual data duplication, e.g., when an entry is created in Salesforce, you automatically update the related SharePoint or Excel documents. This cuts redundant work and reduces errors. What’s more, these solutions are completely customized to your organization so that you utilize your existing processes, you just automate them.

Why These Matter and Why They Work

Automating repetitive, well-defined processes delivers fast, measurable impact. You're talking instant time savings, big ROI, employee satisfaction gains (no more busywork!), and better accuracy. Even small automations, like routing job request emails, can free up hours each month. Scale that across teams, and you’ve got exponential returns.

At OptimAIz, Our team specializes in guiding you through the first steps of automation, helping you identify the highest-value opportunities for ROI while creating a workplace where employees thrive.

Schedule a meeting today. We’ll identify the quick wins your organization will have with automation.