| |
By Bill Murphy · Powered by Colony Spark |
THE OPERATIONS
BRIEF |
|
ISSUE #14 · MAY 21, 2026 |
|
| |
|
| |
|
Hi there,
Most mid-market companies have already automated something. AP workflows, reorder points, follow-up sequences, dashboards that refresh themselves. The technology is live. In a lot of cases it’s working.
The problem is what happens next. Automation runs quietly. It doesn’t raise its hand when the business rule changes underneath it. And when something breaks, the failure looks like a data problem or a people problem before anyone connects it back to an automation that drifted.
This issue is about who’s actually watching, what the review cycle looks like, and how to prove your automation is still delivering value instead of just activity.
— Bill
|
| |
The Automation Ownership Gap.
The technology isn’t the bottleneck. The accountability layer is.
The conversation around automation has moved past adoption. Most mid-market companies have already automated something. AP workflows. Inventory reorders. Quote routing. Customer follow-up sequences. Compliance alerts. Reporting dashboards that refresh themselves. The technology is live. In many cases it is working.
The problem is what happens next.
Automation runs quietly. It does not send status updates. It does not flag when a business rule changed underneath it. It does not raise its hand and say “nobody has reviewed me in four months.” And when something breaks, the failure often looks like a data problem, a process problem, or a people problem before anyone connects it back to an automation that drifted away from how the business actually operates today.
Three signals make this gap visible right now.
|
Three 2026 signals that make the gap visible
· Over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by 2027, not because the technology failed but because of governance gaps, unclear ownership, and inadequate risk controls. The pattern is consistent across industries: deploy faster than you build accountability and projects quietly get shelved (Gartner).
· Finance automation ownership consistently falls into the gap between finance and IT. As workflows stretch beyond the ERP into billing, payroll, and expense systems, no one owns exceptions, workflow changes, integration upkeep, or the operating model behind the automation. Result: manual workarounds, tribal knowledge, single points of failure (Accordion, April 2026).
· Industry analysts call it “automation drift” — processes run but no one owns end-state performance. Roles have to shift toward exception management, workflow ownership, and control design. Skip that step and you end up with automations that are technically functioning and operationally dangerous (TBlocks, February 2026).
|
The pattern across all three signals is the same. The technology is not the bottleneck. The ownership layer is.
This matters for operators of every size and every function, not just manufacturers and not just IT. Finance teams running automated reconciliations. Distribution operations with automated reorder points. Field service companies with automated dispatching. Sales orgs with automated follow-up sequences. Every one of these workflows has rules, exception paths, and business logic that change over time. If nobody owns the review cycle, the automation keeps executing yesterday’s decisions in today’s business.
|
The companies that will compound value from automation aren’t the ones with the most workflows running. They’re the ones where every automation has a name next to it, a review date, and a clear answer to “what happens when this breaks.”
|
|
|
| |
Automation works.
Until it quietly breaks.
Joe Son, Accordion, on why finance automation efforts break down in the mid-market
Joe Son leads finance operations work at Accordion, advising mid-market finance teams deploying automation across ERP, billing, payroll, and reporting systems. His observation isn’t theoretical. It comes from watching finance teams automate workflows that then quietly break when the business changes underneath them.
|
“Without clear accountability, no one owns exceptions, workflow changes, integration upkeep, or the operating model behind the automation. Which means automation works… until it quietly breaks.”
|
Read that quote again, slowly. The four things he names — exceptions, workflow changes, integration upkeep, the operating model — aren’t IT problems. They’re operating problems. They drift week by week, not all at once. By the time finance notices a reconciliation looks wrong, the rule has been wrong for three months and someone has already manually patched it twice.
Son’s second point matters as much as the first: the organizations getting automation right treat it as an operating model, not a project that ends at deployment. Deployment is mile one. The ownership layer is the rest of the race. That distinction is the entire shift this issue is asking operators to make.
|
The takeaway
The ERP partners and operations consultants who help clients build an ownership layer into their automation work — not just the initial deployment — are the ones their clients call back when the next project starts. If you’re the operator, the question is whether your partner sees the engagement as ending at go-live, or as ending the first time you review the exceptions together.
|
|
|
| |
The Automation Exception Audit.
A 30-minute weekly review using data you already have.
The ownership map says who’s watching each automation. The exception audit says whether anything actually broke, and whether anyone noticed.
Most companies have automations generating exceptions every week. An invoice that didn’t match. An order that triggered a reorder against an inactive vendor. A customer follow-up that fired on a closed account. A compliance alert that nobody acknowledged.
These exceptions get handled. Sometimes. Often by the person closest to the problem, who fixes it and moves on without asking why it happened or whether the automation needs to be updated.
That’s where operational debt accumulates. Not in the failure itself but in the response pattern. If the same exception fires three weeks in a row and nobody adjusts the rule, the automation isn’t broken. The ownership layer is.
|
Inputs
· Exception logs from your ERP, workflow tools, CRM, or dispatch system
· The ownership map — active automations with assigned owners
· Business rule changes logged in the past 30 days (pricing, vendors, routing, staffing)
|
|
Four outputs, every week
1. Exception volume by automation. Which workflows generated the most exceptions? Rising volume on a stable automation usually means the business changed and the workflow didn’t.
2. Unresolved exceptions. Which were logged but never addressed? The clearest signal that ownership is missing. If nobody claims them, nobody owns the automation.
3. Repeat patterns. Which exceptions keep appearing? Three identical exceptions in three weeks means the rule needs updating, not the exception handling.
4. Value check. For every automation on the list, one question: is this workflow still saving more time than the exceptions it creates? If the answer is unclear, it needs a review, not more exceptions.
|
You don’t need a new tool for this. A weekly 30-minute review using data already sitting in the ERP exception queue, the CRM activity log, or the dispatch system’s error report is enough to start. The discipline is the deliverable. Every automation that touches orders, money, customers, or compliance gets a weekly check. Exceptions that repeat get rules updated. Automations with rising exception counts and no owner get flagged to leadership.
|
Path 1: Internal build
Export exception logs weekly. Tag each one to its source automation and assigned owner. Track volume, resolution rate, and repeat patterns in a shared spreadsheet or dashboard. Run a 30-minute review with the relevant process owners every week. Adjust rules when the same exception appears three times.
|
|
Path 2: ERP partner
Ask your ERP consultant or operations partner to build the exception audit into your post-implementation support. The best partners already track exception patterns across their client base and know which automations tend to drift first. This is a natural extension of ongoing support, not a new engagement.
|
|
The automation is already running. The question is whether anyone is watching.
|
|
|
| |
|
THE OPERATIONS BRIEF
By Bill Murphy · Powered by Colony Spark
|
|
Running automations no one’s checking on? Or watching the ownership gap show up at a client this week? Hit reply, I read every one. Bill
|
|
| |
|