Find where a process waits, not where people work

When people say a process is slow, they usually mean it takes too long to get through. The work itself might take twenty minutes. The thing then sits in somebody's inbox for four days.

So ask about the waiting. Write the process down as you'd explain it to a new starter, with rough timings if you have them, and paste it in.

Below is how a process works today, step by step, with who does each
step and how long it usually takes (and how long it usually waits).
1. List every handover between people or systems.
2. For each, list what might cause a wait. For example: someone's
   approval, a batch that runs once a day, a person with too much on, a
   missing piece of information, a re-check. Add others that fit.
3. Mark where work could be sent back (a rework loop) and ask what
   normally triggers that.
4. Give me the five questions I should ask the people doing the work, to
   find out where the time really goes.
Don't redesign the process yet. Don't suggest software.

Process: [PASTE]

"Don't suggest software" is on purpose. Left alone, the AI will reach for a tool, and that's the wrong first move when you haven't found the problem yet.

Take the five questions to the people who do the job. They'll know within a minute where it sticks, and they'll often tell you about a workaround you didn't know existed. A workaround shows what the process is missing, and it's the same thing you find when you write the SOP from how the job's really done.

The AI only sees what you tell it, so a process described from memory will miss things. Treat its output as a list of questions to go and ask, not as a finding.