We have had two previous installments for this series. If you just found this post and have not read any of the other installments you should read the first post before continuing on here. The opening article can be found here. Basic Steps Towards a Streamlines and Secure SOHO Technology Environment (part 1) .
If we follow the general outline from the first article we should now be talking about automation of your business processes. When we think of automation we generally tend to think it is about Robots doing the work of humans. Like the Automobile plants where Robots spray paint cars and weld parts together. Yes this is automation. However, automation takes on many forms. A spread sheet where you enter numbers and a calculation is performed for you is automation also. We don’t always think of this as automation because we are so used to spreadsheets in our day to day business lives. However, if you think about it, it is truly automation. Even though you have to enter the numbers the spread sheet is programmed to do the calculations for you as soon as you enter the numbers. You can also change the numbers and see what the outcome will be. You do not have to do the calculations your self. This comes in handy for doing budget analysis. Most small businesses have some sort of budget spread sheet and they often juggle numbers around so they can get the most efficiency out of their cash flow.
I gave the above example so you would start thinking about the automation of processes you may already have in your business. This is a preliminary step in seeing what other processes you can automate and integrate into a streamlined process that will leverage Technology to help you become more efficient. More efficiency could be used to allow you to accomplish more for your business or it could be used to free up some time so you can finally take that much deserved vacation you have been waiting for since you started your small business.
After reading the above you probably want to start making a list of things that you need to automate. Prime candidates are processes that are repetitive and accomplished in exactly the same manner each time. This could be preparing brochures and mailing them. A good way to automate keeping in contact with your clients is fax blast of your brochures. I am finding more and more that e-mail is just too flooded with spam for most customers to take seriously. Unless of course you can send millions of Viagra letters each day so.
OK, enough of the sarcasm from me, ha ha . Seriously, I think people are starting to respond much better to faxes these days especially from trusted business contacts. There is not much fax spam and you do not have to worry about your e-mails getting caught in someones spam filter. Also most fax systems give you a delivery report. You will know if a fax was successful or not. If it was not successful you will know if the number was busy or just not a good number. This helps you maintain a clean contact list.
In one of my shorter post I listed a few fax services . These are fax services where you can e-mail a document prepared in a word processor and the service will fax to the telephone numbers you provide. Many services are very cost effective. If you get the right CRM (Customer Relationship Management tool) you can possibly automate faxing to your customers on a regular basis. An example would be that you decided to run a special offer to customers who have purchased something from you in the past 3 months. You want them to know this is a special offer exclusively for them to show your appreciation for their support. You create a document in your favorite word processor mention the produce or service, the special offer for instance 20% off, and give them a special coupon they can cut out or mention. You query your CRM for customers that meet your parameters and the system faxes to each customer that meets your requirements and alerts you if the customer has no fax number for you to fax to. In this case you would e-mail or better yet make contact with the customer personally by telephone number and mention the special offer and request their fax number. Once this is all programmed in your CRM you can have the special run once each month (or whatever periodicity you want). This would be an automated process that runs with the need for human intervention.
Got the idea? Simple you say but these CRM softwares are expensive. Not true. Some are expensive but if you tale a few minutes to do a search on google you can find many free and low cost alternatives. You just need clarity on what you are trying to accomplish.
BTW. I would appreciate your comments and suggestions. Also if you have needs for your small business let me know. I will try to take the most common request people make and blog about it and hopefully an answer will appear to your question or need.
Thank you for reading. Remember this blog is for the technically challenged. There are very few dumb questions. Feel free to ask about whatever you are interested in.
Also just like the previous post in this series, I believe that the subject of automation is just too deep for one post to cover it. I think I will also need to revisit this topic and expand it. Perhaps I should make each one of the key topics we are discussing a category on this blog and hopefully others will read, benefit, and share their success stories with every one and we can all benefit from the knowledge of what worked for others.
