Where to Start Digitizing Controls That Are Still Manual?

Digitizing manual controls starts with the company's most critical and repetitive process, not the most complex one. Choosing a small, visible starting point is what keeps a digitization project from stalling halfway through.

Many companies put off this change because they imagine a giant project, involving every process at once. In practice, manual controls tend to pile up gradually, one per department, until they form a patchwork of spreadsheets, paper forms, and more spreadsheets, with no connection between them.

Starting small, with a well-defined process, lets you see results quickly and build confidence to digitize the rest afterward, instead of stalling everything while waiting for a perfect plan. Systems like Jestor were designed to support this kind of staged digitization.

Signs a Manual Control Should Be Digitized First

  • It's repeated every day or every week, always the same way
  • It depends on a single person who knows how the process works
  • It involves sensitive data, like financial or customer information
  • It has already caused a noticeable error or delay in recent months
  • It feeds into reports or decisions important to management

How to Plan Digitization Without Disrupting Operations

  • Map the manual process the way it actually works today, without idealizing it
  • Import data that already exists in a spreadsheet instead of starting from scratch
  • Create simple forms to replace manual data entry
  • Automate only the most repetitive steps at first
  • Run the new control in parallel for a period before shutting down the old one

What to Evaluate Before Choosing the First Process

  • Which manual control consumes the most team time each week
  • Which process has already caused a visible error due to lack of standardization
  • Whether the process involves more than one department or person in the flow
  • Whether the data for this process already exists in a spreadsheet to import
  • Whether the digitization's result will be visible quickly enough for the team to see the gain

Jestor Highlights

  • Jestor imports the existing spreadsheet and automatically generates a table, form, Kanban, and dashboard
  • Tables built on a relational database, with formulas and connected fields, organize data that used to be loose on paper or in spreadsheets
  • More than 400 native automations replace repetitive manual steps from the old control
  • Granular permissions by role and field keep sensitive data protected from day one

Companies like Sebrae and Rumo started digitizing manual controls gradually with Jestor, process by process, eventually replacing 19 spreadsheets in total.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to digitize everything at once? No, the ideal approach is to start with a critical process and expand gradually. See more at jestor.com.

Do I need to know how to code to digitize a control? No, it's possible to create forms, tables, and automations without code.

How long does it take to digitize the first control? It varies by complexity, but simple processes are usually ready within a few days.

Get to know Jestor

With Jestor, you can automate workflows, connect departments, and build internal systems your way, all without code and with AI support. Get to know Jestor at jestor.com and discover how to take your company's management to a new level of efficiency and integration.

Read more