Where to Start: Choosing the First Process to Digitise

Where to Start? How to Choose the First Process to Digitise in Your Company

Wanting to transform everything at once is common, but it is the fastest route to exhaustion and stalling. The right start is one process that delivers a clear result in a short time, building trust and funding the next step. Here are criteria to help you choose it.

Strategy and roadmap 5 min read

By Nour Aldein Tleti. Updated 7 October 2026.

How do you choose the first process to digitise?

Choose a process that happens often, causes clear pain in money or time, can be measured, and doesn’t require changing the whole company to succeed. In many Syrian companies this is sales and stock or following up collections; in institutions it may be receiving requests or archiving transactions.

Selection criteria

Frequency: A process carried out every day has more impact than one that happens once a month.
Clear pain: Choose something both the team and management complain about, such as stock-count errors or lost orders.
Measurability: You should know the situation before and after the change in simple numbers, such as time or number of errors.
Clear boundaries: A process with a start and an end, which doesn’t depend on so many departments that the pilot becomes complicated.
A cooperative team: Employees willing to try it raise the chance of success and become ambassadors for the project among their colleagues.

Common candidates in Syrian companies and organisations

Sales and stock: Suits shops and wholesalers because it touches cash every day and exposes errors quickly.
Collections and receivables: Suits anyone who sells on credit, especially when the value of a debt is affected by exchange-rate changes.
WhatsApp orders: Suits businesses that receive most of their orders by message, where orders get lost between staff phones.
Appointments: Suits clinics and service centres that suffer from forgotten appointments and manual scheduling.
Transactions and archive: Suits institutions and charities that handle a lot of paper and need fast access to files.

Common mistakes when choosing where to start

Starting with the hardest: Choosing the most complex process to prove you are serious drags out the pilot and drains the team’s enthusiasm before any result.
Starting with the manager’s favourite: A process that matters only to management, with no benefit staff can feel, meets silent resistance.
Starting with the entire old archive: It is better to digitise new transactions first, then go back to the old ones gradually as needed.
Ignoring the data required: Some processes can’t start without clean lists, so include the time to prepare them in your decision.

Choosing in five steps

01
Gather a list of problems
Ask each department for the three main problems that hold up its work, written in their own words.
02
Score each process
Give a simple score for each criterion: frequency, pain, measurability, boundaries and team.
03
Check the conditions
Ask: can this process continue during a power or internet cut with the proposed tool?
04
Pick one and write its goal
For example, “record every WhatsApp order and know its status until delivery”.
05
Set a pilot period
Before starting, agree on a duration, a review point and what will count as success.

A simple comparison matrix

Process	Strengths as a starting point	What to watch for
Sales and stock	Direct impact on cash and errors	Item lists need cleaning first
Collections	Quick results in cash flow	Needs accurate opening balances for each customer
Appointments	Easy to measure and visible to customers	Needs staff to commit to recording immediately
Archiving	Cuts the time spent searching for files	Can balloon if you start with the whole old archive

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Frequently asked questions

Should we start with accounting because it matters most?

Accounting is important, but it depends on accurate sales and purchasing, so many start with the processes that feed it and then link them to the accounts.

What if the partners disagree on the first process?

Use the same criteria to score each option, choose the highest, and put the runner-up in the next phase.

Can we start with two processes?

Possibly, if they are closely linked, such as sales and stock, but avoid starting unrelated processes at the same time.

Does weak internet affect the choice?

Yes. Start with a process that can continue during outages, or choose a tool that works offline and syncs data later.

What if the first process fails?

Analyse the cause before judging: was it the wrong process, the tool or the training? Then adjust and try again on a smaller scale.