“Mistakes happen!” “You’re only human!” You’ve heard that before, we’re sure.
It’s really simple, but a machine, a piece of software or computer process can do many things better than a human. There are plenty of times when they can’t, but with processes and day-to-day functions, software often wins hands down.
Admin takes up a lot of time in your business and you’ve probably heard that 80% of your profits come from 20% of your time. That profit generating time is rarely the admin although the admin is essential to growth, stability and profitability.
So what do you do?
Hire more people? Improve their data entry skills? Give them more coffee?
We’ve heard a lot of reasons for using an admin person over using software to handle tasks but when it comes down to some tasks we feel that the right software wins.
Simply put, software doesn’t have a bad day. It’s binary. It doesn’t have feelings. It’s not affected by social media and it’s never late to work after a horrible commute.
Software is created to do a job and it does it over and over again in the exact way you designed it to and told it to.
But when is the time right for you to create bespoke software or use off-the-shelf automation in your business and free up your team to add value elsewhere?
We want to scale the business – let’s hire a new admin!
If you’re looking to scale your business then you’ve no doubt looked around your team to see who could step it up a little or who could work more days or hours. You might even be considering hiring more members of the team to enable you to take on more work and more clients.
This might be the time when you need to stop and think about your systems. If you’re looking to hire more members of the team to carry out important admin then it’s a good time to chat about automation.
Scaling a business requires strong systems and with automation in place you can scale more in the future when you have a process that can handle more and more and more without any extra effort at all.
Consider this:
- It takes one extra administrator to scale your business to the next level.
- Then to get to the next it takes two more admin staff.
- And then you need another four for the next level.
If you built in software into your systems and processes much of the admin that can be automated, you might find that you don’t need to take on any more admin staff initially and then no matter how you scale, the software scales with you.
1 task or 1,000 tasks - a good piece of software won’t notice the difference. An administrator will.
When you can’t scale your business without adding more and more admins you know it’s time to consider software to help you.
We can’t scale because…
When an admin task stops you from scaling you also know it’s time to consider a conversation about day-to-day tasks.
If you think of a large corporation in the modern world, much of the information and communication you receive from them on a regular basis is totally automated.
Think about your mobile phone company.
- They don’t sit down and type out all those bills.
- They don’t warn you your data is running out by asking Jean in Accounts to drop you a line.
- When you’re up for renewal and the new must-have smartphone is released they don’t trawl their CRM manually looking for people to sell it to.
No, it’s all automated. At the top are marketing and sales execs making decisions to grow and scale the business and then they make the demands on this system to contact and upsell their customers.
In the background the payments are all automated, the bills are automated, the data is automated and even the service they provide is all handled by software. The good businesses know when and how they need people to get involved.
Now think about your business.
- How much of it is rpeated?
- Anything that you do over and over again like onboarding clients, invoicing, chasing, collecting documents, emailing or sending information based on their situation or where they are on their specific journey in your business could be automated.
- How free would you feel then?
Most of the successful businesses in the world build systems that take care of everything except filling the business with more business… and even some of that can be automated too!
We made a mistake…
Anywhere in your business where data duplication exists should be a concern to you. If you see a situation where a member of your team is inputting data twice you need to stop and think about the implications of this.
Data is binary. There are no mistakes once it’s in a system. But add a human into the mix and it can be taken down or inputted incorrectly and that could be catastrophic for you.
If the data can be put in once only then you should aim for that. Double entry is one of the biggest reasons mistakes happen and if you can avoid it, then you should.
Software can help you here too. Automating and duplicating data across your systems stops any mistakes happening. If you’re currently copy and pasting, emailing when something happens that you need someone else to action or something similar, then you should look to automate that.
There may well be some off-the-shelf software that could help you here. It doesn’t have to be something big. But look into it and plug the hole of mistakes and leaked information in your business.
Lead the way, beat the rest
Quality software also gives you the competitive advantage and huge potential for increased profitability. When you build in some simple yet effective and creative onboarding software or some clever CRM-based marketing or sales into your business you’ll get more sales and more profits - with less effort.
When you can get started faster and onboard quicker you’ll grow quicker and be more competitive. If your competition is still inputting all their data they’ll be slower to react and slower to make decisions. You’ll gain more clients and customers simply by being able to respond faster and give them the options right away.
However you interact with your customers, if you’re finding it slower than you’d like or struggle to convert, onboard, upsell, or communicate with them then software could be the answer to growth and efficiency that leads the way to a competitive edge.
You’re a better choice when you have better systems.
When does it become a job for a computer?
When you can’t scale, when you see mistakes, when you need more people in your team to take on more business, and when you see repetitive processes that need to be completed over and over again.
Software makes it right every time and enables you to grow and be more competitive.
We’d love to speak to you about your business to see how we could help.
