Not every business is at the stage where automation makes sense yet, and that's fine. Building automation too early, before a process has stabilized, can create more maintenance work than it saves.
Signs you're ready
A process that repeats the same way, week after week, with only minor variation, is ready to automate. So is a task that's currently bottlenecked on one person's time, where growth is being held back specifically because a manual step can't scale. If you've documented the same explanation of "how we do this" more than a couple of times, that's usually a sign the process is stable enough to hand off to a workflow.
Signs it's still too early
If the process itself is still changing week to week, if you're not yet sure what the "right" version of it even looks like, automating it locks in a process that isn't finished yet. It's usually better to run it manually for a few more weeks, let the process settle, and then automate the version that's actually working.
A useful way to test it
Write down the steps of the process as if you were explaining it to a new hire on their first day. If that explanation is short, consistent, and doesn't need many "well, it depends" caveats, it's a strong automation candidate. If the explanation keeps needing exceptions, that's a sign to wait, or to simplify the process itself before automating it.
Starting small works better than starting big
Businesses that get the most value from automation tend to start with one well-defined, high-frequency task rather than trying to automate an entire department at once. It's easier to prove the value, easier to fix if something's off, and it builds the internal confidence to tackle the next one.