You have started your business, are highly motivated to move your ideas forward, and then you get lost in day-to-day administrative tasks that consume your time and energy? Every business owner has likely been through one of the following scenarios:
Customer Data: You spend hours copying customer contacts from emails and chat functions to a central database and your email marketing system. And on top of that, you realize that the information in the different systems is out of sync.
Inventory Management: To keep track of your inventories, you manually copy and paste your online and in-store orders into a database. You cannot deliver to your customer on time because you did not realize early enough that you were running out of supplies.
Marketing and Promotions: You want to offer your new product on different websites and on your social media channels, but are frustrated with the time and effort it takes to get it published on all sites separately?
While running your own business is exciting, non-integrated systems create frustrations, and manual administrative tasks can easily become exhausting, time-consuming, and costly. What few small business owners know is that help is available in the form of online automation software.
Online automation software like Zapier, Automate.IO, or IFTTT lets you automate simple, repetitive tasks without the need of programming or relying on developers to build the integration. The software is so easy to use that anyone can build their own app workflows with just a few clicks. And: it is available on a start-up budget.
So, how does it work?
Let's have a closer look at Zapier. Zapier lets you create connections between apps to push data from one app to another. Zapier describes itself as the glue that connects thousands of web apps - for example, Gmail, Google Sheets, Microsoft Office, Slack, Dropbox, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, etc.
The implementation is pretty straightforward:
Select the applications you want to connect.
Define a trigger - an event in one of your apps that kicks off your workflow.
Define an action - what you want to happen as the outcome of your trigger.
You are good to go!
Zapier calls the trigger and action workflow Zaps. For example, you want to get notified about a new order on Shopify? Simply create a Zap with the trigger "when there is a new order on Shopify" perform the action "send SMS to my phone".
Or you want to automatically save attachments from emails? Have a look at this Zap:
Or how about event reminders that are sent automatically to your social media channels? No problem:
And now?
All the possibilities that automation software like Zapier offer can be overwhelming. In order to see automation not as an additional issue to worry about but as a solution to your daily manual administration tasks, let's start with two simple steps:
Take notes of your activities that are repetitive. These are the activities that you should think of automating.
Get in contact with Revby.co.
Revby will help you identify the right tools and processes to start automating so that you can finally have time to do what you really love: grow your business.
About the Author
Kathrin Bauer-Kohout is a Leadership and Organizational Development professional with 12+ years of experience in diverse international environments. She has worked as a Management Consultant, Project Manager, and Chief of Staff for C-Suite executives in the healthcare industry. Find her on LinkedIn: Kathrin Bauer-Kohout | LinkedIn