Automation is a drug

The first thing I ever automated was SMS follow-up messages to contacts in a lead bank. Instead of the admin team going through their call list and sending a text whenever a lead didn’t answer their call (very frequently), they could type a code number beside the contact. This triggered a middleware-powered workflow to send the contact a personalised text based on the code number that the staff member had entered. It saved a heap of time, and errors; staff were able to 3x their outbound call volume, and lead contacts no longer received grammatically retarded texts.

I found it very enlightening. When you automate one process, your eyes are opened to what’s possible with automation, and suddenly you start identifying stuff wholesale. Even if you’re not the one that designs and configures the automation, you now know what’s possible, and develop a thirst to push other mundane tasks into the background.

Recently I met with a prospect (let’s call him Drake) who, at best, was very sceptical that we could provide any value to his business. Drake agreed to meet only on the condition that it would be a sub-1 minute discussion (Drake was a super busy beaver). I visited his office, said hello and handed him a business card. 20 minutes later, Drake had identified 10 different tasks to automate, and I had to cut the discussion short so my calendar didn’t get too harassed. It all started when we talked about their process of checking supplier invoices against their POs. Drake didn’t know that that could be automated, and for that reason, didn’t know that a whole bunch of other tasks could be automated too. We discussed a couple of other tasks, then he began suggesting automation opportunities under his own steam. He pushed for a follow-up consult to decide on their first project and rope in his ops manager (let’s call him Kendrick).

‘Drake’ didn’t want to engage automation services until he unlocked what’s possible. It’s possible that you’re in the same boat.