In this article, I want to share with you some ideas you can use to help unearth suitable candidates for automation that fall under the “quick win” category.
As we’ve found, the actual “automating” part usually isn’t too complicated. It’s the knowing exactly WHAT to automate that has the biggest impact and causes the least amount of boat rocking.
A good place to start is to work through your repetitive todos. This usually needs a bit of concentration, it's easier said than done.
Start with thinking on a daily scale. Are there any tasks you or your team need to repeat every day or at least most days?
Then move on to weekly and monthly. Are there maybe reports, or marketing activities that need to be completed? What about 1 to 1’s and accounting?
Another place to think about is your customer’s journey - Their onboarding, during the engagement and then exit.
And what about recruitment - applicants, interviews, contracts etc.
The repetitive tasks are a great place to start but next, think of areas where you’d like to do more. Areas where maybe you or a team member are doing X amount of work per day/week but ideally you’d like to double it say.
Again it can take a bit of time to really think and come up with a decent list.
Now that you’ve come up with a list, next we need to do some smart filtering and sorting.
For starters, not everything that you’ve identified CAN be automated. Some things are just not possible and where your technology will be a blocker.
For each area you’ve identified, ask:
If you can get a “yes” for all 5 questions then that’s a quick win!
The next best result is getting 4 out of 5 with the last question being a no. Having a decent impact on your business isn’t always achieved through one automation but, sometimes through a series of smaller automations that tick all the other boxes.
For other parts of your processes that aren't getting either of these scores, it doesn’t mean that they’re not good candidates for automation. They could well be! But, they need some more thought and don’t count as “quick wins”.
Exactly how each of your identified automations are actually implemented depends on a lot of factors. When creating our roadmaps for clients, we’re looking at the options below (in order of complexity):
When it comes to the question “Which software product should I use”, that’s a big question. There are 1000s of products out there that solve 1000s of different problems.
Typically though it’s best to “find the right tool for the job” rather than what a lot of people do which is sort of fudge their current software into kind of doing what they want, but not fully and not optimally. Although there’s usually a faff element in switching, it can be the best long-term option.
Let’s use the process of someone booking a free discovery/introduction call with your company.
Level 1 - How do they book a call? Is there a button on your website? Do they get sent an email confirmation? If not, then a tool like Calendy can be a good option to provide a smooth customer experience. This tool also has some good automation and integration features.
Level 2 - Are we minimising no-shows? With tools like Calendly, we can setup automated email reminders with just a couple of clicks.
Level 3 - What happens with the booking data? You probably have some sort of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system that you use to keep tabs on your customers (if you don’t, you probably should!). With Calendly and similar tools, we can integrate into your CRM directly or through a tool like Zapier and add them to your contacts list.
Level 4 - Are our best sales reps attending the highest-value calls? - With tools like Zapier, we can intercept Calendly bookings, read the email address and then using that, get company information about the booker. This is handy because we can then email you / a senior person in your team if a high-value prospect book as you may want to attend the call for example or perform extra research to make the most of the opportunity.
Despite these “levels” getting more complicated, they all count as quick wins. We’ll discuss this more in the next section.
Okay, we’ve got a load of things we can do now, how do we go about actioning them?
Well, let’s first go back to the previous example and the 4 levels we identified for the appointment booking.
With digital automation, it’s not the same as going to the gym. As in, there’s not usually a benefit (it’s usually detrimental) to go “all in”.
Instead, we want to be more thinking about “one step at a time” or in this case, one level at a time.
If for example, you have no booking system in place, let’s go to level 1 first or maybe jump to level 2 as well but, best we start small, test the automation, make sure everyone understands and is happy with the setup and how it works as it should.
Let that settle in a few weeks and then move up another level or two.
If we did go from 0 to level 4 in this instance, we’re likely to add more confusion and hiccups along the way than are needed. Even if you're comfortable with them, it’s your team that needs to get comfortable. Changing too much, too fast is more likely to meet resistance.
What we don’t want to do is turn a quick win into a royal pain in the ass!
So there we have it. How to unearth automation quick wins.
This is a similar framework to what we use at HiTide to uncover them for our clients.
And starting with these is usually the best for everyone!
Like learning to dive, start at the poolside, not the 10m diving board.
When wanting to run a marathon, better to start with a short light jog.
When learning to cook, start with an omelette, not a 5-course nouvo cuisine extravaganzza.
It's the same with automation. Start a bit smaller, then build on the solid foundation.
HiTide helps small businesses win back their time and ⚡SUPERCHARGE⚡ their team's productivity by transforming their spreadsheets into a bespoke system.
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