Can Automated Systems Help Your Business Scale?

[vangogh]

I found a post earlier on creating automated systems for your seo business (http://www.searchenginejournal.com/creating-automated-systems-in-your-seo-business/11841/). While I realize most people here don't specifically have seo businesses, I think it's an interesting topic for discussion and the general idea of systems does apply to most of us.

From the post


The primary reason why one-man-shops fail is because they are unable to piece together all the pieces in the puzzle i.e: they don’t have a system. You’ll find the individual <insert your pick: SEO/SEM/Social Media> consultant trying to do business development, design work, keyword research, proposal creation, phone calls, all at the same time - It’s a model that simply cannot scale.

Again don't pay so much attention to the specific mentions of the search industry, but rather the general idea of creating systems in order to scale your business. Most of us wear many hats. Keyword research may not be among the tasks you do, but I'm sure you could find something easily to replace it on the list.

A lot of us here run service based businesses with ourselves as the only or one of a few employees. That means the money we earn is tied directly to the amount of time we can work. Once you've reached a certain point in order to make more you either need to:

1. raise your prices
2. work more efficiently
3. work more hours

You can only do the first two so much before reaching diminishing returns and I think it's safe to say we'd all like to avoid the third.

Scaling my business has been on my mind for much of the year. In fact most of the goals I've had for business this year have had to do with it. I did raise my rates a few months back and since the beginning of the year I've been trying to get better at efficiency. Both have led to this being a more profitable year for me than years past.

For example one thing I've done is to be better about building a library of code. The editor I use allows me to save snippets of code, which can easily be placed in a new project with a click or two. It easily saves a couple hours on every project.

Another goal I'm working on is to develop products for sale, since they can be scaled and ideally allow me to make more without requiring more of my time directly tied to the earnings. Hopefully it would also let me scale back my services so that I can be more flexible in selecting the projects I take on and who I want to work with.

Do you think setting up automated systems is something we should all be thinking about? Do you have any systems in place and if so what are they?

[rezzy]

To me, you are making two seperate points.

1. Creating a second business revenue
2. Working more efficiently (I think thats what I was thinking)

I think its a great idea, to create have in addition to the "running" business one, that can exist in its own eco-system. That only takes slight modifications and updates to continue being a benefit.

But at a point, becoming to automated can be a bad thing. For instance, Twitter is not the place to automate a response to a follower. The general population of Twitter people do not like them.

[billbenson]

Option 3 isn't an option right now as I put in 12 to 14 hour days but it does lead to option two.

90&#37; of my web design time is spent with automation. At some point I would like to get that number down, however one of the keys to the sales I get has been automating quotes as much as possible, one central database for all reports, and a ton of admin applications.

I have certainly spent a week writing a program that allows me to get a quote out in 2 minutes instead of 20 minutes and convert it to an order in several minutes vs another 20 plus.

Was that a waste of time? A week is a lot of time to write the program (If I didn't keep changing the definition of what I want it would be less), but my closure rate is better as well as my efficiency.

I don't really think thats what you meant by the original post, but I think efficiency or automation can dramatically affect your bottom line over time.

[nighthawk]

Option 3 isn't an option right now as I put in 12 to 14 hour days but it does lead to option two.

90% of my web design time is spent with automation. At some point I would like to get that number down, however one of the keys to the sales I get has been automating quotes as much as possible, one central database for all reports, and a ton of admin applications.

I have certainly spent a week writing a program that allows me to get a quote out in 2 minutes instead of 20 minutes and convert it to an order in several minutes vs another 20 plus.

Was that a waste of time? A week is a lot of time to write the program (If I didn't keep changing the definition of what I want it would be less), but my closure rate is better as well as my efficiency.

I don't really think thats what you meant by the original post, but I think efficiency or automation can dramatically affect your bottom line over time.

I think that is what vangogh meant, and it's a great example. Its easy to just treat every job seperately, from quote to delivery, but at some point you need to start developing procedures on how to run a project, and start looking at automation for some of the processes - like the quoting system you have.

Such an automated quoting system is a massive boost - not only can it speed up the process, but also make it far more effective too. Compare it to a paper based quoting system - once you send out a quote they are probably filed away and never looked at again - searching for a quote you did in the past can be a nightmare. With a solution like you have, every time a request comes in you can search for similar jobs and see what you quoted, or search for previous jobs you have done with that client to see what rates you did in the past. All this can be done in minutes instead of hours (if at all with a paper based system).

I developed a job tracking system for a company I worked for a few years ago - it allowed them to trace every single job they ever bid on, as well as file invoices, labour hours and part usage - they can now trace back serial numbers of every part ever used on a job and see exactly where it was bought from. The system was a major advantage to the company, and many others could benefit from a similar system.

Its part of the reason I decided to switch to freelance work.

[vangogh]

Bryan maybe it is two points, but I think they both go under the same idea of scaling your business. The extra revenue from developing products was more an example of what I'm doing or hoping to do in order to scale. Maybe it's a stretch, but I think in some ways it might count as putting a system in place.

Bill it's just like Gavin said. I think what you described is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. You might have spent a week writing the program, but now you'll be saving 18 minutes per quote. Over time you'll get back the hours and either have more free time or be able to use the time on something else that will bring in revenue.


Its easy to just treat every job seperately, from quote to delivery, but at some point you need to start developing procedures on how to run a project, and start looking at automation for some of the processes

Yep. I think most of us who are service based tend to treat each new job separately. Most of us probably get into business because we enjoy what we do and then set out to learn the business side of things. It's easy to look at each new client and treat them all 100&#37; uniquely. Also not all of us would feel comfortable programming automation.

Still we all do repetitive tasks. Something as simple as the initial reply to an email. Some will need to be unique, but how often do we all write essentially the same email to what is essentially the same initial query. Just saving a copy of your basic reply would help to automate that process. Maybe it only saves a minute or two per email, but the time will add up.

When it comes to developing a website so much of the code is reusable. The design is unique, but anytime I code a menu or navigation bar it always starts the same was, as an unordered list. In the past I would type out the list each time, but now I have that basic code saved and I can get it into a new document in a few seconds. Maybe it only saves me a minute, but by doing the same thing with other snippets of code I can probably reduce each project an hour or two, which becomes time I have for the next project or for developing my own projects.

Most of us can probably find some ways to set up systems in our business. Coding and programming are easy examples, but they certainly aren't the only way to set up a system. Another easy example is when it comes to invoicing. Do you create a new invoice from scratch or do you have a template. Maybe you purchase some invoicing software and only need to fill in a couple of details.

[rezzy]

Steve, I think you are taking the automation in an angle I never considered reading your original post and its really got me thinking in terms of how to increase the turn around.

The idea of a tracking system and job quote is a perfect of something I had not consdered. Its the perfect example of how taking a repetative job and implementing a system to handle it is great.

I send alot of the same emails out to people, in turn I created a template. I simply insert the persons information and click send. Its allowed me to get messages sent out more quickly and I can do it without really thinking.

The next step is to create a form, that I fill out with their details click send and it handles it. But I think it fits right along with automating your business.

[vangogh]

Exactly. Really anything we do more than once is ripe for setting up a system. Again I think many of us just deal with each task as something separate and unique and while many repetitive tasks do have a unique component to them, the parts that don't can usually be automated or set up as part of some kind of system.

I used to look at things that only took a few minutes to do as not being worth the time to systemize. The time savings per each doesn't amount to much. But how many times a year do you write what's essentially the same email? How many times do you drop in the same bit of code into a project? How many times do you answer the exact same questions? Over the course of the year saving a minute or two on each can really add up.

[billbenson]

Reezy, the way I did it this time around is I stuck it all in a couple of database tables. It's always a work in progress as I'm always saying "I should have added fields". But when the info is always in one place, you just right a new app as you need it. I'm using it under zen cart, but I made it transportatable so I can use it for other cms's / carts and it has all costing and pricing so it could be used to populate a different cart? It's getting the db structure to have everything you want thats the hard part, and when you change it, you may need to go back and update all your aps.

[orion_joel]

Some great responses here. I did write a post about this once, on my blog, however it was kind of limited in it's focus.

With the concept of automation, i think that the one thing that you really need to focus on is automation of the tasks that don't directly generate profit, as well as the ones that are time consuming. Let me give some examples though.

- The way that internet banking is now, makes it quite easy to automate payments. Especially if you have weekly or monthly payments, why not create automatic payments for them. I used to manually do all my payments, but now even though i have very little happening in my business, i still have about half a dozen payments that are all set automatically. It may save me only 1-2 minutes per payment, however this is before you take into account the other wasted minutes that you have when you change tasks, which can easily add up.

- purchasing, is also another area that can cause some little issues with wasted time. As i have found i can often waste minutes or hours even looking for the best group of suppliers to get the best pricing. This so far has not been a time constraint problem, however the more i did this the more that i found pattern's, one supplier would be cheaper for one brand and another something else. Often the money saved by shopping around suppliers gave more profit then was lost in time, however i saved almost 50&#37; of the time by keeping lists of which suppliers were generally better priced on different products. Not really automation, however did save time.

- Invoicing while not directly related to profit itself, is an important thing if you can automate to some extent. Most accounting packages i have used do have ways to automate, such as the ability to set up repeat billing, for weekly or monthly invoicing. This saves time typing up the same invoice every month for web hosting or some other default service.

Really what it comes down to is always be looking for ways to automate or save time on tasks that don't directly related to any profit. Then start working on ways to take what you may do within the time you get paid for in less time. I think that for the most part if people were to put the full effort into automating some of their time they could potentially get twice as much or maybe even more done. It just comes back to some people are not so willing to put the effort in, but the results can truly speak for themselves.

[vangogh]

Good example. I agree that it's not always about automated something directly tied to profit. Anything that will save you time can be a good thing and it's then indirectly tied to profit since it frees up your time.

With banking I haven't taken the plunge to automate everything. I think it comes from a time when I might have to be a little creative some months to pay the bills. I did move to paying most everything online though, which has saved me time and saved trips to the post office.


It's always a work in progress

Bill I think that's a good approach. I bet what stops some people from developing systems is the thought that they have to develop the entire system all at once. If you can systemize small things even in a limited way, you little by little develop the full system without even realizing it.

[orion_joel]

That is exactly it, if you automate the tasks that you do not get paid for, it means that you have more time available you can charge clients for.

I can understand the idea of not automating payments if you need to move things around a little, to fit the payments around financial considerations. For me at the moment this isn't an issue and as such only have one thing thing that is not automatically paid, which i am looking into how to set up an automatic payment for.

The number on payment that i automated which is the most useful was my credit card, the online banking i have with my bank allows me to set up an automatic payment for the balance of the card on the due date. Meaning i never miss paying the full amount on time, and to date have not paid a cent of interest because i missed the payment date.