What to Automate First
Before you hire an agency, identify your top automation candidates. The best processes to automate with AI are: repetitive (same steps every time), data-heavy (lots of copy-paste between systems), rule-based (clear if/then logic), and currently done by your most expensive people.
What a Good Automation Agency Does
A good AI automation agency starts with a process audit — mapping your current workflows to identify the highest-ROI automation opportunities. They don't just build what you ask for; they help you figure out what to ask for. If an agency skips this step and goes straight to quoting, that's a warning sign.
Technology Signals
Good automation agencies use the right tool for the job. For most business process automation, that means Make.com, Zapier, or n8n for workflows, with AI layers for unstructured data processing (document extraction, classification, summarization). If they're proposing custom-built everything when off-the-shelf would work, they're billing you for unnecessary complexity.
Evaluating Proposals
A good automation proposal quantifies the ROI. "This automation will save 15 hours/week of manual data entry at $45/hour = $35,000/year. Our fee is $8,000." If an agency can't articulate the ROI of their own work, they probably haven't thought through the implementation carefully.