If you’re approaching new technology for the first time, those fears are valid and understandable. But your team absolutely can focus on re-humanizing interactions with customers instead of wasting time on monotonous tasks. And you can preserve human connections while streamlining your vital business processes. The best of both worlds awaits with business process automation (BPA).

Bye-bye busy work, hello BPA

Have you ever felt like your team members were underperforming and/or not producing their highest quality work? It’s probably not because they’re lazy or unmotivated. On the contrary, it is likely because they are overloaded with busy work and spending their time working on low-value tasks that require little ingenuity or creativity. Most employees who actually want to stick around in your business would rather be doing things that require more specialized skill or expertise (and are more engaging for the employee and high value for the business).

As a business owner, you probably have a list of things you could be doing right now — but you find yourself lacking time, resources, and labor. Here’s where automation can shine. You can automate the busy work that would normally keep your team members’ heads down in order to free up time for meaningful interactions, improved innovation, and anything else that can give your business a competitive edge.

BPA helps you lift these limitations by streamlining a multitude of processes. In fact, most departments have numerous processes that can be automated. Some of those include:

• Appointment scheduling
• Marketing and sales outreach
• Customer communication
• Record keeping and management
• Employee recruiting and onboarding (HR)
• Events and media outreach (PR)
• Drafting and sending proposals and bids
• Payment accounting and billing processes

Automating all or portions of mundane and repetitive tasks like these can enhance the human-to-human experiences in your business rather than take the meaningful substance out of them.

Asking the Right Questions

With so much promising data and so many success stories to suggest that BPA can lead to faster customer acquisition and revenue growth, why aren’t all companies investing in it? And why are businesses that have existing automation still under-utilizing its capabilities?

Let’s take a look at some of the most common questions that entrepreneurs, managers and business owners ask when considering whether to implement BPA in their businesses.

1) What happens when we let automation take over formerly human-powered activity?

Many people still believe that automation technology is inherently cold, inauthentic and impersonal. This is especially common for marketing and sales technology that takes advantage of artificial intelligence to replace management and personalization. To avoid this, you want to be mindful of which processes you automate. Try applying automation to frequent, low-stakes tasks so your team is available for interpersonal interactions that require critical thinking, empathy and creativity. After all, robots aren’t buying your product — so they shouldn’t be selling it.

By automating simple and predictable tasks, you can actually create more valuable, personal connections between your brand and your clients. When approached thoughtfully and intentionally, automation can lead to a higher number of human-to-human interactions and maximize the quality of those interactions as well. Using automation to facilitate day-to-day processes paves the way for more quality work and more satisfied employees who consequently get to use a wider range of skill sets. The primary aim of implementing automation in your business should be to handle the least productive and most repetitive tasks that take up your team’s time so they can attend to what matters most in your business.

2) Will automation distract from basic skill development?

Another worry that many business owners and managers share is that the focus on automation could divert attention away from training and basic skill development. The argument is that by automating basic business functions such as scheduling, reporting, data entry and analysis, businesses are neglecting to invest in their team by teaching them to perform those important, yet basic, tasks. Leaders fear that by placing an emphasis on automating everything, they are failing their teams and that this approach could lead to poorly trained teams.

However, when automation is used properly, it can allow individuals to be more successful — maximizing potential and improving efficiency. Using automation, you can improve your consistency and define the correct processes in your entire business, which makes it easier to train new people, measure trends in your performance over time, and optimize your best practices for growth.

BPA can also reveal which strategies and processes are most effective and efficient so that you only use what works best. By automating your business processes, even if they involve manual (non-automated) steps, you’ll be making them more consistent. When there’s a process, you can identify the places where it is not working and optimize it.

Creating and automating processes will also yield useful data that will reveal which employees stand out, allowing you to incentivize them accordingly and provide more training for those who struggle. Finally, automated processes reveal valuable KPIs for your team’s performance and notify you quickly when something goes wrong, providing additional training opportunities. It makes it easier to measure trends in a business’s performance over time and optimize your best practices for a consistency

3) Does automation really improve competency?

What happens if you and your team begin to rely too heavily on automation and eventually your team begins taking less ownership of their tasks?

Robert M. Virga, founder of Ei Dynamics and business automation expert, puts it this way: “As the old adage goes, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ This could not be more relevant than with automation. Often, when we automate something people forget about it and then a few months go by and the owner of the company starts asking why something slipped through the cracks, and nobody knows why.”

His objection is tied to the underlying fear that over-reliance on technology will reduce individual responsibility on your team. Even though automated systems do not forget about tasks or commit human errors, it is still humans who program and run them — which means they are still imperfect and prone to mistakes. In fact, since your team members will assume that the automated system is handling all the details correctly, they may fail to notice these issues when they do occur.

Although Virga’s concerns are valid, it’s important to recognize that any tool can be used for harm or good. If you can view automation as a productivity tool, not a replacement for responsibility, you’ll be in a much stronger position for implementing automation into your business. This concern is only a problem for those who abdicate responsibility when they choose to automate their processes. Automation is not meant to be a replacement for human intelligence but rather as a supplement. Even with automation in place, managers and small business owners still need to constantly search for opportunities to improve. The potential for growth is never-ending.

4) How do I know if my business processes are optimized enough for automation?

Are you wondering how you’re supposed to automate your business processes when you don’t know if they are ready for automation? Maybe you aren’t even sure you have processes to automate.

What most entrepreneurs find is that their processes will never be perfect, but automation can help iron out the kinks. If you keep waiting until your processes are perfect to go ahead with automation, you’ll be waiting forever. By making business process automation a priority, you can accelerate the development of effective processes by getting data on what’s working and what’s not, much faster.

By focusing on creating repeatable, successful business processes as you implement automation in your business, you’ll stimulate growth and change much faster than if you just deal with ineffective processes when they begin to create a problem you can no longer ignore. Think of it as a spring cleaning for your business processes. In the end, you’ll have a clean, organized collection of processes that you can automate, which will make your systems more consistent, make it easier to train your team, and make it easier to see areas for improvement.

Business process automation is a powerful tool, and when used intentionally, it can lead to serious business growth. By now, it should be apparent that the question to ask yourself is not whether you should invest in business process automation but whether you can afford not to. Let computers and machines do what they do best, so that your human team members can do the same.

The post Humanizing Automation appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

A workforce that evolves in tandem with automation is as much about offloading mundane tasks to machines as it is about how we use the liberated time and money that results. It’s not necessarily about doing less work; it’s about doing better, more meaningful work.

There are a number of popular arguments for and against the widespread adoption of automation into the workforce. As much as it seems an inevitability of our world, we still do have the time (in fact, we have the obligation) to figure out exactly how we want to use automation to improve the quality of our lives and our businesses. We can choose to write the rules deliberately, rather than simply acquiesce to the fears and whims of inherent unknowns.

Evaluating the pros and cons of new technologies

While most of us can agree that it’s great to automate all of the boring, mind-numbing things we’d rather not do at work, there are still so many questions about the social and economic implications of automation and AI. We often wonder what the responsible use of those technologies really looks like. Answering these questions forces us to take an honest look at what the best use of our time, energy and creativity is. We have to be clear about what we value and how we want to utilize technology to optimize our professional and personal experiences. How can we use AI and automation to make innovation and authentic human connections more effortless and meaningful, rather than, well…obsolete?

At a basic level, the question that we are trying to answer is whether these advancements will ultimately make things better or worse — and for whom. That is, can we look forward to vast improvements in productivity, freedom from boring work, and improved quality of life? Or should we focus warily on the threat automation poses to jobs, disruptions to organizations, and strains on the social fabric?

We have to decide what merits more of our attention: the positive implications of automation and AI — or the negative.

Preserving human connection in automation

Many people fear that widespread adoption of automation will have a deleterious effect on our job market and our economy, as robots and machines begin performing most of the work humans do, thus rendering us expendable…and possibly broke. Others fear the increasing dissolution of basic social skills such as in-person conversations that do not involve a screen or digital device or, hey, asking someone out without the aid of social media or a messaging device. There is a very legitimate concern that the delegation of all professional and social transactions to a fully automated sphere would negate the need for basic human faculties such as empathy, emotional intelligence and the ability to read social cues. This would, indeed, be a step backward.

Alternatively, we can imagine that automation and the intentional use of AI technology could have the opposite effect. Automation has the potential to free us from the drudgery that so many experience in their daily work life and open us to more opportunities for professional fulfillment, allowing us to develop the best of our talents. And, perhaps most importantly, by using automation to carry out repetitive and tedious tasks, we could free ourselves from the screen, creating more time for valuable human-to-human interaction in our daily lives.

These opposing scenarios constitute the paradoxical nature of the inevitable fusion of automation into our workforce.

What exactly are automation and AI?

The subject of automating tasks and even entire roles in our current workforce is met with a lot of confusion and misinformation, especially when talking about the differences between AI and machine learning, automation’s often ill-defined relatives. For the sake of the rest of this discussion, let’s define the differences between those terms, which are so often used interchangeably and, thus, incorrectly:

AI: AI is the theory and development of computer systems enabling non-human devices to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence such as visual perception, speech recognition and decision-making.

Automation: Automation is generally defined as the creation of technology that can control and monitor the production and delivery of various goods and services.

Let’s break it down a little further with some real-world examples to help us understand the types of jobs that automation and AI can be used for in our world today.

1.  Automating high volume, low complexity, routine administrative tasks
   • Real-world example: A call center — Automation can replace some parts of the job of a call center representative, such as requesting customer identification information and tracking the status of a delivery. But certain tasks, such as talking clients through their frustration with a faulty product or mishandled order will, for now, remain a human task.
2. Machines taking on more complex tasks by applying things such as pattern recognition using sensors and algorithms to carry out various tasks
   • Real-world example: The Amazon Go retail store in Seattle — The store does not have cashiers or checkout lanes. Customers pick up their items and go, as sensors and algorithms automatically charge their Amazon account. In this case, automation has replaced the work elements of scanning purchases and processing payment. Other elements of the job of store associates are still done by humans, including advising in-store customers about product features.
3. Robots moving autonomously and interacting or collaborating with humans through the combination of sensors, AI, and mechanical robots
   • Real-world example: Driverless cars — With driverless vehicles, robotics and algorithms interact with human drivers to navigate through traffic. While the human “co-pilot” no longer does the work of routine navigation and piloting, they still do things like observing the driverless operation and stepping in to assist with unusual or dangerous situations. What is often overlooked is that the human co-pilot is actually “training” the AI-driven social robotics, because every time the human makes a correction, the circumstances and results are “learned” by the AI system.

These examples illustrate the endless possibilities to apply automation. Among companies that reported automation success, 72% credited utilizing automation strategy as a top contributor to their achievements. Therefore, automated businesses processes can provide opportunities for growth and advantages.

According to the World Economic Forum, roles involving redundant tasks will decrease by 6.4% in the workplace by 2025. This doesn’t mean these roles will be completely eliminated — rather, professions adapted to this new technology are expected to increase by 5.7%. In other words, automation is likely to change the vast majority of occupations — at least to some degree — which will result in redefining traditional work roles and transforming business processes.

Here’s why this might be a dream come true for so many professionals in today’s labor market:

Currently, 1 in 3 professionals cite boredom as the reason for leaving their jobs. This statistic suggests that the work we do is not challenging us, is not requiring the best of our abilities or talents…nowhere near it in fact. This may be one of the reasons for epidemic levels of disenchantment in the workforce today. While these findings might be lamented as reflecting the impoverished nature of our work lives, they also suggest the potential to generate a greater amount of meaningful work. They force us to imagine how much better it could be.

Imagine a world where no one had to come in and do mundane tedious work while sitting slouched at a computer for 8+ hours in order for the world to run effectively and progress to continue. This kind of transformation could occur as automation replaces more routine and repetitive tasks, allowing for more human creativity and intelligence in the workforce. Of course, not everyone can or will want to perform at a higher level; many people will continue to function at a mediocre level even if given an alternative. But for a great many of us who do harbor untapped potential that is stifled by the daily grind, automation offers the possibility to open new professional pathways.

The power of automation and AI beyond the workplace

Thinking on a larger scale, beyond the professional context of how automation may affect our lives — might the automation of mundane, repetitive jobs eventually help build a society of healthier, wealthier and more fulfilled individuals? Would people enjoy their lives more if given more time to do life-enriching activities such as travel, be in nature, spend time with friends? With more time outside the cubicle, would people have healthier relationships and family lives and better understand each other? The vision isn’t only about what we can automate so that we can do MORE work (even if that work is more creative and interesting, but to use automation to help rewrite what a day in the life of a regular working citizen could be like.

Let’s say we take the optimistic view in which technology can lift us up, free our time, and release us from soul-crushing boredom. To some people, this may genuinely sound like an idealistic pipe dream, considering all the ways technology has removed us from physical reality, seducing us into “connecting” through screens and digital devices. Indeed, technological advances over the past 20 years have wreaked a lot of havoc on physical forms of communication. (Remember eye contact? Remember in-person break ups? What about watching where you are going when walking down the street, rather than staring at your device? People even used to talk to each other while waiting in line instead of Instagramming.) While many people talk about the ways AI technologies can improve our ability to understand and connect to one another, it’s clear that it takes a very deliberate effort (read: willpower) to actually make this happen in a world mesmerized by machines.

The version of the future in which robots control the world is a product of our collective imagination. As with any tool, how we use it is more significant than if we use it. Using intelligent automation tools requires specific intention; it requires that we, to some extent, reach consensus on the innate value of human interaction and relationships and the importance of fostering creative exploration. This future, as much as its dark alternative looms, is a possible outcome in a rapidly advancing and increasingly automated world.

Technology marches relentlessly forward, and it would be foolish to argue otherwise, but some things remain fundamental, and people-to-people communication will continue to be one of them. Humanity will continue to persevere in pursuit of our highest technological potential, including the automation of many of our current job functions, so our best move is to decide here and now what the greater purpose of that technological advancement is in our lives … and how to master it.

The post Ignite Creativity in the Workplace With AI and Automation appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

So how can leaders propel their businesses forward without suffering from overwork or burnout? How are the most productive leaders utilizing their software to reduce stress and workload in the midst of ever-increasing responsibilities and to-do lists?

One of the most significant dragons business leaders must learn to train — if they want to thrive in the digital age — is to harness the power of technology to reduce their workload by handing off tedious tasks to automation software. As any Ontraport user can attest, automation can make businesses run more efficiently and profitably, freeing entire teams to spend more time enriching the business and delivering optimal customer experiences.

Think of your business software as a powerful digital team member who is willing to do all the tasks no one else wants to do — without mistakes. This digital team member serves the purpose of taking stressors and to-do’s off of your plate and does so in milliseconds rather than minutes, hours, or days.

You can hire employees to do things like send reminders and schedule appointments, update spreadsheets, or send invoices to clients. They will grudgingly do the work because they need the paycheck — but this is not the best use of talent. There is no reason that you or your team members should spend time on the things that require little skill or creativity to accomplish. This is what software can do with accuracy and speed.

Using business process automation (BPA) is a way to eliminate manual, time-consuming tasks by replacing them with efficient automation tools. Implementing BPA helps leaders focus on moving the business forward, instead of simply managing it.

“As a leader I love automation,” said Lena Requist, Ontraport President. “First of all, I don’t have to pay a person to do something and, secondly, I know that it’s done correctly every time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

Under Requist’s direction, Ontraport has automated everything in the finance team so that it can get through review quicker and with fewer mistakes. Now, the team can tackle tasks with fewer people and focus on high-value reports and KPIs instead.

The benefits of BPA for leaders

Reduced labor hours

The right automation solution will reduce the amount of labor time used to arrive at a set goal. Whether the automation sends email updates or routes digital files, business process automation will diminish the time it takes staff members to complete their daily tasks. This frees up their time to concentrate on more important decisions and higher priorities.

Reduced error

A large percentage of document processing mistakes are really user-generated errors. These arise when manually inputting data and can be as simple as inverted numbers or a typo. With automation tools in place for managing documentation, there is no manual data entry required, which in turn eliminates typing mistakes. Once a business document is captured in the system, its information is automatically transferred to a digital database. This can save countless hours and, in some industries, mean the difference between effectively maintaining regulatory compliance or not.

Operational efficiency and stability

Efficiency, by definition, describes the extent to which time, effort and cost are effectively applied for the intended task or purpose. Business process automation reduces the time, effort and cost it requires to complete a task. Likewise, with an automated process in place, you can eliminate situations where processing steps might be missed or documents misplaced; the automated process follows rigid guidelines that are set and created by you. Your employees can easily perform their tasks, such as verifying information and completing daily job functions, in a scenario where the process is accurate, constant, and dependable.

Customer consistency

Although BPA handles the internal tasks that are necessary for your company to run, many of those operations still contribute to your customers’ experiences. If you automate your customer service follow-up process, your customers will consistently experience the same level of service from your business. For example, when customers call in, their specific account information can be pulled up from the digital database within seconds so they don’t have to repeat information to you on the phone. This makes it easier for customers to depend on your brand and makes working with your company far more user-friendly.

Reduced costs and overhead

Cost is another area BPA directly improves. By diminishing errors and maximizing employee efficiency, companies often see a decrease in expenditures while simultaneously growing revenue. Business process automation solutions save companies money and labor by eliminating paper-based file management.

Employee satisfaction

BPA can help you utilize the true talent of your team. It’s all too common that talented people get hired for a job that requires specialized skills but end up spending much of their time doing monotonous or time-consuming administrative tasks. Few people want to spend their days on manual tasks that have nothing to do with their background or career goals. Business automation can virtually eliminate those tasks from their workload, freeing your talent to do what it is they do best (and what they enjoy most). This increases employee satisfaction and retention in the long run.

Scalability and sellability

In today’s fast-paced, digital-centric world, automation is the foundation of creating a sustainable, scalable, and eventually, sellable business. People don’t buy businesses — they buy systems and processes that work and make money.

Peace of mind for leadership

Most importantly, with the peace of mind that the ship won’t sink without you, you can go on vacation and know that everything will be taken care of. For business owners, that kind of mental freedom is priceless.

Ontraport for leaders

As a business leader, one of the most essential parts of your job is ensuring your business is running smoothly and your team is working effectively. Keeping tabs on your company’s KPIs and your team’s performance can be time consuming and complicated without automation. Here are some ways you can generate automated reports and manage your team using Ontraport.

Keep tabs on manual tasks

Whenever there’s a process that involves manual tasks, you can rest assured those tasks are being completed correctly and on time by setting up notifications to be sent to you via email or SMS.

For example, you can set it so that you (or the manager assigned to that employee/user) receive an email or SMS when a task is assigned, due, completed, and more. You can also set it so that you’re notified one day after the task is due so that you can check whether the task was completed or not.

Just be sure first that the users in your account are each assigned to the appropriate role and, therefore, the correct direct reporter (or manager).

Get reports sent to your inbox

If you’d like to keep tabs on task completion but prefer a report sent to your email on a certain schedule rather than receiving one-off notifications, you can set up a fulfillment list. This approach is also beneficial if you’d like to be only notified of tasks that were not completed within a certain timeframe.

In your campaigns that involve the tasks you’d like to track, you can add a “Task is Completed” goal for each task and edit the wait above the goal to be for a time period of your choice (other than “forever, or until the goal is reached,” as this won’t provide the solution you’re looking for). This will create an alternative path where you can add an “Add to Fulfillment List” element, which will add tasks that are not completed to a fulfillment list for you to review. Note that if a task has multiple task outcomes, you can set up goals for each of those outcomes with different follow-up based on the outcome.

You can set up your fulfillment list to go to your email address (and/or your managers’ email addresses) every day, week, month, or on weekdays. You’ll be able to see which tasks weren’t completed and which employee was assigned to that task so you can follow up with that employee and resolve any issues.

Uncover issues and find solutions

It’s inevitable to have glitches in your systems or for a customer to experience a misstep such as not receiving an email. To uncover the source of the issue, you can use the Automation Log and the Contact Log within customers’ contact record to see their exact interactions within your system. With the Contact Log, you can see the interactions your contact has had with you, such as form fill outs and email opens; with the Automation Log, you can see the actions taken in your Ontraport system as a result, such as a tag change or campaign change. Checking the corresponding parts of the logs can help you find the breaking point or hole so that you can fix them.

This can be useful for your customer-facing teams or managers but also has a big impact on your business as a whole. If just one customer is experiencing an issue, it’s likely that others are too, so finding the source of the problem and fixing it can be essential for keeping your business functioning smoothly.

Keep track of customer payment failures

Making sure you’re getting paid is part of keeping your business running. If you run a subscription service or offer payment plans, you can be notified of payment failures and cancelations so that you can gauge the status of your business and forecast for the future.

You can set up recharge settings under Sales > Settings > Recharge Settings to dictate
what happens after a payment fails. The system can automatically retry the payment and reach out to the customer to update their credit card information. After the last failed attempt, you can set it up to send an email to yourself so you know this customer has been lost.

See what’s happening in your business

Get a bird’s-eye view of your most critical business data using the Metrics Dashboard. You can customize the dashboard to show you any stats you’d like, such as total sales dollars, total sales by product, number of contacts added to database, average time to conversion, and number of cancels. It’s common for leaders to start their days checking in on these high-level stats to make sure all is running smoothly and, if a dip is seen lasting longer than expected, it’s a sign to look into what may be causing it so that you can find a solution. Likewise, the information allows you to make smarter marketing and business decisions with confidence.

The possibilities of using Ontraport as a BPA platform are endless. You may already utilize Ontraport for its marketing and sales tools, but there’s so much more to explore. If you take the time to dive in and automate your business processes, you can reap the benefits of implementing efficient processes to grow your business.

The post Unleash the Power of Business Process Automation appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

Finance has to manage incoming and outgoing money. Recruiting has to manage job applications and the hiring process. HR has to manage employee onboarding and experience. Public relations has to build and strengthen relationships with news outlets and potential partnerships. These tasks are all important, and they all take time.

If you’ve explored Ontraport, you likely have an idea of how you would use each part of the platform. You might have planned to use membership sites for earning paid subscribers and recurring revenue, forms for collecting customer data, and email for email marketing — all of which are intended uses for the software. But what you might not have planned on was using those same solutions to run the seemingly un-automatable internal parts of your business.

It may come as a surprise that many of the features you use every day to automate your marketing and sales can also be used to automate the internal business processes that consume much of your and your team’s days. Here are just a few examples.

Tasks: Streamline your to-dos

There are some responsibilities that are better left to people — such as handling refund requests and reviewing employee performance — but actually remembering to do them on time can be a challenge. To keep your important manual projects flowing smoothly on schedule, you can create campaigns containing recurring tasks that are triggered based on dates and times. The outcome of these recurring tasks can trigger automation such as emails or subsequent tasks.

For example, let’s say you run a business that sells homemade skincare products and your store manager, Shelby, is in charge of taking inventory once per week. With many other responsibilities, Shelby might forget to count product stock without a weekly task scheduled for Monday mornings at 8:30.

While she’s checking her inbox to catch up on orders that took place over the weekend, Shelby receives an email reminder to take inventory. After completing the task, she marks the task outcome as “Complete” and fills out the linked form with her inventory numbers. Upon submitting, your product team receives an email letting them know which products are sufficiently stocked and which they need more of.

Forms: Manage internal communication

Managing internal requests can get messy — especially when handled manually. Team members will ask others to complete tasks in passing, via email or over chat, and before you know it, it’s a project management nightmare. In Ontraport, you can easily clean up your business’s internal request process with forms.

Continuing with the skincare company example, imagine your marketing team keeps the website updated with your skincare product descriptions. If your product team changes the ingredients in one of your popular face masks, they’re going to want your marketing team to update the site to reflect the changes. Instead of emailing the request, your product team would fill out your internal form. In the form’s two dropdown fields, they would select the topic of their request (“Website Update”) and the condition that determines the exact task assigned to marketing (“Update Product Description”). The product team would then write details in the long text field and submit the form.

Once submitted, an email would be delivered to marketing containing all the information they need to complete the task. After making the requested website updates, marketing would go in and mark the task outcome “Complete,” triggering one final email to the product team notifying them that their request was fulfilled.

Membership sites: Onboard new employees

Whether you’re onboarding new employees or training existing ones for a new role, getting team members up to speed is a crucial yet time consuming part of your business. To minimize the time spent on training, you can record it and place it on an Ontraport membership site. This is effective for a couple of reasons: you won’t have to lead an in-person training, and your employees can refer back to the recording as many times as needed.

When learning to create the homemade soaps and cleansers in a skincare company, for example, your new hire Elise would go to your training site, log in using the credentials she received in her inbox, and begin watching her training videos.

After completing each training video, she would take the post-course quiz — which was created by placing a form at the bottom of the page — and the “Form was submitted” element would trigger an email notifying her supervisor of her progress.

Email: Organize internal processes

As illustrated in many of the other examples, automated emails can play a valuable role in maintaining timely internal processes. There are countless ways to work email into your business process automation, but a noteworthy example is evergreen reminder funnels. You could create one for every recurring event in your business, such as quarterly performance reviews or annual certification renewals.

The skincare company’s HR director, for example, might want an annual report on how each employee is performing. In order to get everyone to log in and fill out their performance review, he or she might create a campaign in Ontraport that triggers every year on January 1 containing a series of three reminder emails.

As employees submit their review forms to complete their performance reviews, they’re removed from the subsequent emails in the funnel and placed back on a wait element in the campaign until January 1 the following year.

Card View: Utilize a visual task system

For more complex internal projects, such as securing vendors for products or events, the ability to get hands-on and visual in each stage can make a world of difference. With Card View in Ontraport, you can do just that.

Let’s say your skincare company is looking to create a brand new face mask formula using all new ingredients that you’ve never sourced before. A big part of getting that new product off the ground is securing vendors for each ingredient who meet your requirements for price and availability. With more than 30 different potential vendors in mind, keeping track of your status with each one is beyond overwhelming.

To simplify the task, you would start by creating a dropdown field called “Vendor Status” in Ontraport with the values “Interested,” “Reached out,” “Vendor Secured,” and “Dropped Vendor.” This will serve as the framework for your visual stages in Card View.

From there, you would be able to drag and drop your potential vendors into new stages as you progress with your research and outreach.

Get creative and stay inspired

Beyond the five use cases listed above, there are endless options for automating your business processes with Ontraport. If you have business process automation builds in your account that you’re proud of, we encourage you to share them in the Ontraport User Community on Facebook.

Likewise, if you’re curious about how you would automate a specific part of your business in Ontraport, asking in the User Community is a great way to get inspired and connect with like-minded entrepreneurs.

The post Think Outside the Box appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

In reality, business process automation (BPA) is like a trusty assistant who works around the clock to complete your most repetitive, mundane tasks for you and helps you stay on track with your goals. This assistant’s job isn’t to take over your job, but rather to facilitate it. When you implement automation into your business processes, you create potential to enhance your work flow and maximize your time spent on improving your brand. 

In other words, BPA is a tool to enable your team members, not replace them. Here are some ways to determine how to balance and introduce automation to your team’s processes.

Understanding the roles: Automation and people

Implementing BPA doesn’t mean you’ll automate everything. While automation exists to make your life and your team’s lives easier, there are some tasks that are best left to people. Knowing exactly what they are will help you get the most out of it.

Tasks Automation Should Handle

Here are six key ways to identify tasks that may be good candidates for automation:

Delegatable

These tasks can be done by anyone and don’t require your team’s special skills or knowledge.

Tedious

These tasks are fairly straightforward, but you dread doing them every day. They don’t require much brain effort, just a lot of your time.

Long

These tasks may be important and somewhat complex, but they take up a considerable amount of time and don’t require you to do the initial research.

Repetitive

Daily or weekly tasks that are performed the same way each time can usually be automated, no matter how big or small.

Frustrating

If you have tasks that you don’t enjoy or can be irritating and they fit the other criteria for automating, let automation take over.

Time-sensitive

Time-sensitive tasks, or at least parts of them, should be automated when possible, ensuring you get everything done on time to keep your business running smoothly.

Tasks People Should Handle

Here are six ways to identify tasks that your employees should keep on their plates:

Brain power and creativity

Automation can have a negative effect on quality when the tasks in question involve creativity, research or human sensibilities.

A unique skill set and expertise

When a task involves using skills and knowledge that require specific training and education to complete — such as graphic design or management — it’s likely not a good candidate for automation.

Sensitive information

Tasks that involve handling sensitive information, such as credit cards or social security numbers, can be both positively and negatively affected by automation. Because automation runs without questioning the process, it’s always best to keep a human eye on processes involving sensitive information. In these cases, instead of taking over 100% of a task, automation can simply assist or remind your employees of their manual tasks.

Tough decisions

Any tasks that require high-level decision-making abilities, especially those that aren’t based on repetitive criteria, should not be automated. For example, tasks typically handled by managers or executives regarding the hiring and firing of employees are handled that way for a reason: They require critical thinking and the ability to make the right call on tough decisions.

In-person interactions

It’s important when reviewing your processes prior to automation that you’re aware of which aspects of the process require in-person conversations or simply require human emotional or relational intelligence.

Justifying the time

Before automating a task, weigh the costs and benefits. If adding automation won’t save you any time, or if the cost of automating it exceeds the manual labor cost, don’t do it.

Encouraging Adoption of BPA

Getting your team on board with automation can be a challenge that stands in the way of your business reaping BPA’s full ROI. The first step to encouraging adoption is giving them a deeper understanding of why partnering with automation is a must. Here are just a few of the many benefits your team stands to gain from BPA:

It reduces burnout

Being able to offload mundane, repetitive tasks that get in the way of the work you want to do is a breath of fresh air. Whether it’s sending every job applicant the same “we’ve received your application” email or manually re-trying credit card transactions, lackluster tasks put a damper on creativity and skill. Automation changes that. 

It boosts productivity

Every task that you offload to automation opens a new window of time that your team can use to get more meaningful work done. For example, while automation is handling your recruiter’s application forms and thank you emails, your recruiter can use that new-found time to interview the best employee matches or find new recruiting avenues. Likewise, when your finance team isn’t sifting through failed credit card transactions, re-trying them and sending emails to notify the customer, they can spend that time on what they do best — managing your company’s money.

It works even when you can’t

Very few people enjoy returning after the weekend to work on a long list of repetitive tasks that racked up while they were away. Fifty prospective employees submitted their applications over the weekend? Automation handles tasks like this as they come in, eliminating the post-weekend pile-up that your team dreads.

Once your team understands the enormous weight that BPA can take off their shoulders, getting their buy-in likely won’t feel like pulling teeth. To speed up the adoption process, it’s a good idea to find a couple of champions or ambassadors — that is, employees you can train on the benefits of BPA and how it works so they can train the rest of the team and help get their buy-in.

The post Shift Your Perspective on Business Process Automation appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

Joseph Hollak was a founder of Build Success, a small business coaching and consulting company based in Silicon Valley. He’s also an E-Myth Certified Business coach. Before helping small business owners systemize their business operations, Joseph spent nine years as a financial consultant with two of Wall Street’s largest firms, then he moved into a leadership and turnaround role for a Silicon Valley real estate company.

In This Episode

Before starting his own consulting firm in Silicon Valley, Joseph Hollak spent nine years as a financial consultant on Wall Street. Now, he’s broken out of the traditional corporate America career path to pursue his passion of helping small business owners systemize their business operations. In this episode, Joseph shares the common issues he sees among small businesses, the importance of delegating, and tips for where to start.

Topic Timeline:

1:35 Universal Truths in Small Business

Entrepreneurs are phenomenal at what they do but might not have the training to systemize their business.

2:07 Finding the Time to Systemize

Determining the smallest points of change that can make the biggest impact is the best place to start improving your internal business strategy.

4:29 Pulling Back the Covers and Searching for Delegation

When you’re working with businesses, you’ll usually find when you first pull back the covers that CEOs and founders are touching everything in their business. They don’t need to. Delegation is the key.

5:15 The Trust Factor

The first opportunity for delegation begins with trust. The delegatee needs the proper trust, mentoring and training, delegation becomes so much easier.

6:18 A Common Starting Point

It’s usually the technician roles that are the first opportunities for delegation. What are you doing as the CEO, at $500 an hour, that could really be done maybe at a $20 or $50 per hour role?

9:22 Be True to Yourself

Life gets easier and more fun when you stop living it for others and start living it for yourself.

11:15 From Corporate America to Your Own Path

Joseph is skilled at seeing the big picture and his introverted qualities help him use his one mouth and two ears proportionately, making him a great listener.

12:28 Nurturing Big-Picture Thinkers

Learning strategic thinking involves learning a really important lesson — you don’t have it all figured out. You don’t always know where your paths will take you, but don’t be afraid to fail and see what happens along the way.

15:09 Generating Business in Your Business

Results matter. People hire professionals because they want more or less of something in their lives. Making your message stand out, match their needs, and present your results is necessary for bringing in business.

19:05 Self-Promotion — Necessary or Silly?

Joseph is learning to overcome his fear of promoting himself as the face of his business so that he can focus on really communicating with his audience on a personal level and making sure he reaches the people who need his help the most.

– Joseph Hollak

Show Transcript:

LR: Welcome to Modern Ontrapreneur. Today we have Joseph Hollak, who was a founder of Build Success, a small business coaching and consulting company based in Silicon Valley. He’s also an E-Myth Certified Business coach. Before helping small business owners systemize their business operations, Joseph spent nine years as a financial consultant with two of Wall Street’s largest firms, then he moved into a leadership and turnaround role for a Silicon Valley real estate company. Thanks so much for joining us.

JH: Yeah, thanks for having me. This is an honor. I really respect what you guys are doing at Ontraport. This is going to be a lot of fun.

LR: Yeah. Good. Thanks for being here. So tell us about the kind of businesses that you tend to work with.

JH: I tend to work with small business owners, usually in the neighborhood of $5 million or less in annual revenue. Usually, mom-and-pop businesses that have found a way to scale, and now they’re experiencing some chaos or any of the other problems that comes along with scaling a business to a certain point. They’ve gotten out of that infancy stage and now they’re having real world problems, and they typically are business owners that are phenomenal at what they do. They just don’t have a business background or nobody’s ever really shown them how to professionally run a business. That’s where I come in to help them put some of the pieces in place that they don’t necessarily know how to do or they didn’t go to school for.

LR: And is there a particular type of business that you tend to work with, apart from just the revenue size?

JH: Not necessarily, there are some universal truths in small business and it doesn’t have to take a certain industry or niche in order to coach a small business of that size. So I’m not focused on any one particular niche but just a business, just a small business that has some chaos, and they really need to systematize and figure some things out because they don’t have much of a life outside of the business the way they’re doing things now.

LR: Yeah. So one of the challenges, we obviously worked with lots of businesses in the same space with the same sorts of problems, right? And we certainly pound the table about building systems and processes in your business. Then one of the areas that we get push back is around time, right? Like they say, “I don’t have the time to even keep the wheels on, let alone stop and figure out how to write a process and teach some people how to run the process and then make sure I’ve got management in place to …” So how do you overcome that? How do you get business owners who are already too busy to actually carve out the time it takes to systemize?

JH: That’s a major problem with my clients that I’ve taken on. It really boils down to a couple of things. Number one, you really have to find leverage in their business. What little tiny amount of work or effort or process or system can I implement to give me a big return on time or a big return on money? So we look for leverage points that they might be reinventing the wheel every day or every week or every month.

In addition to leverage points, for me, my philosophy is a lot of these business owners are making the decisions that they’re making and they’re in the predicaments that they’re in because they’re missing some key leadership skills. For me, it’s really about leadership and emotional intelligence. And I cringe when I come in contact with a business owner and they say something like, “If I just had more money or if I had more sales, everything else would be fine.”

And the reason I cringe behind that statement is, if I two X or three X or 10 X your business for you in a very short amount of time, there’s so much else that revolves around your leadership. Why you make the decisions you make, how you make the decisions you make, how you relate to people. What motivates you internally and externally. That just because we something X your business with sales, you’re going to have even more problems and we could ruin the business if you don’t have that leadership component, that nucleus in place for really smart decision making. So leverage and leadership and emotional intelligence is really what we need to work on first because if we get that right, everything else after that usually takes care of itself with a little bit of system or process.

LR: Yeah. And luck. And so let’s talk about leverage. Where do you find that you discover leverage most commonly? Like where are those areas in a small business where you go like, “Every time I pulled back the covers, there’s an opportunity here.”

JH: Yeah, that’s really easy to see when you work with a lot of businesses and because this is an entrepreneurial theme show and podcast, most entrepreneurs think that they have to do everything. They have to touch everything in their business. Nobody can possibly do it better than I can. So delegation is usually a really big weakness for small business owners. They’ve started small and maybe, in the beginning it just was them alone or them and a partner, them and a spouse, so they’re used to doing everything and they’ve got that mentality that they have to do everything.

LR: You’re speaking my language here. We actually teach the same thing and have entrepreneurs start with delegation and just so that I can get you to say it instead of me once…. what do you normally see is the first opportunity for delegation for small business?

JH: Yeah. It’s trust in whoever you’re delegating to. You have to know and you have to give that person that you’re delegating to the proper tools and the proper coaching and mentorship. They need everything that they need in order to take that project off your hands and do a really good job. So if you train that employee and you coach them and you mentor them and you set them up for success, it becomes so much easier. The trust factor is there. And a really close cousin to delegation would be time management. So if both sides of the equation are thinking and working on time management, everything else kind of falls in place and gets a little bit easier. But delegation boils down to trust and in order to trust you have to set that person up for success with what they need.

LR: Sure. And is there a function in the business that you tend to encourage people to delegate first? Like do you tell them, “Hey, just delegate sales or delegate support, or delegate the actual bread baking,” or what is the area that you tend to get people to focus on first?

JH: Well, to put it in those terms, it’s usually the technician work. We look at if you think of yourself as a business owner, if you think of yourself as the CEO of that business, what are you doing as the CEO that could really be done maybe at a $20 or $50 per hour role? You might be charging yourself $500 an hour because you’re doing some of these other tasks that you could delegate. And delegating these other tasks as long as that person is 70, 80, 90% as good as you, things are going to be okay. So I’m always looking for those tasks that don’t have that CEO stamp on them or they’re not necessary for the CEO to be working on — it’s those technician roles that you can delegate and they can get it done as good as or maybe even better than you. And you can focus on the big picture and the vision and the mission and everything else that comes along with running the company at the high level.

LR: As a CEO who went through that process of being certain that I was the best at everything and then discovering that I couldn’t do it all and then having to sort of let go of control, I know personally how kind of painful that process is and scary it is. How do you coach a business owner who may have been doing everything for 20 years that it’s time to, kind of loosen up the reigns a little bit?

JH: Yeah. It’s usually not an overnight process for sure. It takes time for them to realize this. The phone ringing at the front desk has to get answered. The CEO doesn’t have to be the one that answers it, right? So there are tasks that my clients usually make it quite clear to me what’s falling through the cracks. Typically, at that level, what’s falling through the cracks is the company is not growing as fast as they want it to or the company is growing and they can’t handle the growth. There is some major component to their success that isn’t happening because of the opportunity cost of them doing some of these other roles.

So it’s usually really easy to figure out what’s not getting done when you take a look at all the little tiny million things that are getting done by the CEO. And if you point out those opportunity costs, here’s what it’s costing you because you don’t have time to focus over here.

LR: Painting a picture of the pain.

JH: Yeah. Painting a picture of the pain and a lot of that helps. A good coach can really bring out of you what your internal values are and what you’re really trying to accomplish. So if I know where you’re headed and what you really want to accomplish and the values that you want to take with you into the future we can really figure out easily what’s not getting done. And if you tie what’s not getting done to what you’re trying to accomplish, they see the dots. The dots are all connected and they see the path.

LR: Yeah. Awesome. Let’s switch gears to your own business, your own career. You’re a consultant, which is a tough gig. There’s a lot of consultants out there and people are skeptical of spending money on consultants a lot of times. So, just like any entrepreneur, you’ve obviously struggled to build a business. If you could kind of like go back and give yourself a piece of advice about how to have made that process easier, what would it be?

JH: Well, for me, I’ve made a lot of decisions in my past that seemed to have been rooted in or motivated by making other people happy. So if I was going to give a younger version of myself some advice, it’s to be true to yourself and listen to what’s really important for you and try not to live your life based on what you think other people’s expectations are. And since I’ve learned that lesson, life gets so much easier and a lot more fun when you’re not trying to make decisions to live your life maybe to impress a company or a boss or a parent or some other authority figure that you want to see happy. Make decisions for what you really believe in and the direction you want to take your life. And that really changed my life when I learned that lesson.

LR: Interesting. And what is the decision you made that changed the direction for you specifically? Not just be true to yourself. There was a thing like, “I’m not going to fucking do that job, dad, I’m not going to be a doctor.” What was the thing?

JH: Well, the thing for me and, and speaking of dad, dad was, “You need a corporate job. You need a government job, they’re going to take care of you. You’re going to stay there for 40 years. You get the gold watch and the pension and you get retirement.” So dad, in my case, couldn’t understand entrepreneurialism, and small business and taking risks. For him, it was all about safety and security. So when that moment for me was breaking out of that “corporate America is going to take care of me forever” mold and being true to what I want to go after.

LR: Yeah. That’s a tough move.

JH: That’s a very tough move.

LR: Yeah. And what is the skill set that you think you have that allowed you to confidently make that move?

JH: I think it boils down to three things, really. One, I’m really good, for whatever reason, at seeing the big picture. We may not be there yet, and this might be the direction we’re going, but I can really see the big picture of where we’re going and that has really helped me in a lot of different areas of my life. The second thing that has helped me is being an introvert. I’m a natural introvert and so …

LR: So you love these cameras.

JH: I love these cameras pointed at me, right? The thing about being an introvert is I’m a really good, attentive listener and that has really played into strengths. One mouth, two ears, use them proportionally and you can usually get a lot further in life that way. And the third thing is just loving the puzzle, loving to put the pieces of the puzzle together. And for me, the puzzle’s business. I mean, there’re so many different pieces to a successful business and if you love putting that puzzle together and you get up every day with that willingness and that drive to figure out those pieces, that keeps you motivated, or it does for me anyway. So those are probably the three things that I chalk my success up to.

LR: Yeah, interesting. So you talked, the first thing you said is about being able to see the big picture, right? So some kind of strategic thinking and it’s interesting because I was actually just talking to my mom last night who has mentioned that she’s watched a lot of these episodes and that she noticed the people sit here and say that I see the big picture, and kind of like over and over again. So it seems to be a trend from amongst successful entrepreneurs. It makes me wonder how do you train that or how do you generate that skill set? Where do you think that comes from?

JH: That’s a good question. I’m not a parent so I’m not exactly sure how mom feels, but if we’re going to, if we’re going to talk to mom right now, what’s mom’s name?

LR: Lynne.

JH: Lynne. All right, Lynne, this is for you. Lynne probably didn’t know exactly what you were going to do for a living when you grew up, but Lynne definitely saw the big picture of, “I want a functioning person in society. I want somebody who loves other people and is caring and nurturing for other people,” so all along the way, she didn’t know exactly what the final outcome was going to look like, but Lynne was instilling lessons in you, developing values in you, teaching you lessons along the way and she just knew, probably in her heart, that if she does all of these little things correctly, no matter what he ends up doing, whatever is on the horizon for Landon, everything’s going to be okay because I gave him these little lessons and values along the way. So she may not have known exactly what the end-picture looked like, but she was planting those seeds all along the way as a good parent would.

LR: Yeah. Well, thank goodness for my mom. But, what about somebody who’s in their twenties and trying to figure out watching this show. And they’re like, “Man, what is this big picture thing all about? How do I, how do I learn strategic thinking?”

JH: Yeah. At some point, it’s okay not to have the end picture in mind and all figured out. There’s been so many times in my life where I’ve had everything figured out and it’s about the time when I realized that I have everything figured out that I learned a really important lesson — that I don’t. Right out of college, I was a stockbroker for nine years, and I thought that was going to be my career. Right? Don’t pay attention to anything else. This is it. And there’s going to be certain paths and avenues that are going to come in your life that may not be tied to the end picture, and just don’t be afraid to fail. Just go with it and you never know what it’s going to turn into or where it’s going to end up or what lesson or skills you’re going to have because of it. Don’t be afraid to fail, and just take chances and go with it. And you’re headed in a big picture in general. You may not have all the details figured out, but you’ll learn them along the way if you pay attention; there’s going to be road signs along the way.

LR: Yeah, so you have to, like the rest of us, have to go out and get customers. How do you do that? What’s working now in your business to generate business?

JH: A couple of things. If I focus on the big picture, results matter. People don’t hire coaches or consultants because they want a coach or a consultant. They hire these professionals because they typically want less of something in their life. They want less chaos, less stress, less employee turnover, or they want more in their life. They want more revenue or more time off or more profit or whatever the case may be. So they’re hiring a coach or a consultant for results. So if you go into a relationship with that in mind, results-based performance, referrals are so much easier. Yeah, and word-of-mouth and you’re building your reputation. If I drill down a little bit and give you some tactical things, we spoke of leverage earlier in the conversation. Leverage in this day and age is so important. We’re constantly being hit with all kinds of messaging and advertisements and any little technological advancement that you can use like Ontraport, for example, to give you leverage to stay in front of people. That’s very helpful. One thing that has been huge in my life is really not that fancy of a technology at all. It’s opened up so many doors. It’s reinforced so many relationships, and that is just a handwritten note.

LR: Old school.

JH: Old school, blue ink on white paper and a very nice message that would really resonate with the receiver. That has opened so many doors for me and changed so many relationships for me. It’s so unexpected. It’s so rare in this day and age with automation that we have in place on the technology side, just do the complete opposite and write a little, handwritten note and it just, it changes everything. People really appreciate it.

LR: Yeah. Interesting. I totally agree. And which is why we launched a paper and ink magazine because it’s just, it’s so —

JH: I have the initial issue still.

LR: Yeah. It’s so surprising, right? One of the things that you said – and I presume that this particular episode will end up getting viewers who are consultants – and one of the challenges that consultants have around results is obviously word-of-mouth is the thing, right? But you’ve got to get results, and it’s not that consultants aren’t good at what they do but, very often, the gap between expectations and what’s actually possible to deliver tends to be wide. People hire consultants because they want their lives saved. Sometimes it becomes challenging to sort of manage the expectations and make sure that the at the end of the day people feel like they really got what they paid for. So how do you, just as a consultant giving a tip to other consultants, how do you manage those expectations at the outset of a relationship?

JH: It boils down to amazing conversations, transparency, authenticity, and don’t be afraid to deliver, I don’t want to say bad news, but shocking news or just very to the point news to a client. If their expectations are off the chart and they’re not really reasonable, you’re setting everybody up for failure if you don’t address that concern right up front. So if you’re a little bit afraid to have that transparent, honest, authentic conversation in the beginning, everything else after that is just going to go downhill and unravel. It’s just being really honest right up front and some of these expectations might not be met. Let’s see how far we can get and if we hit the moon, great. If we don’t hit the moon, well, we’re still ending up in a really good spot but, for me personally, if I had to give any advice to those consultants or coaches listening it is just to be really authentic and really honest and really upfront in the very beginning of those assignments or those relationships. So everybody’s on the same page. Don’t over promise and under deliver. That’s never served anybody well.

LR: What is your kind of cutting edge right now? What are you learning? What do you want to achieve next in terms of your evolution as a business owner?

JH: Well, for me, the struggle point that I’m having right now is self-promotion. Self-promotion in this day and age seems like, on the one hand, it’s everything, right? Thinking of myself as the brand, that seems like it’s really prevalent in today’s day and age. But on the other hand, there’s parts of me, being an introvert probably, that thinks me being the brand and promoting that is really silly and really hard to do. So I’m really struggling with and learning and trying to master self-promotion and to think of me as a brand. That’s the tough one for me. Right now.

Yeah, especially for introverts, it feels embarrassing.

Yeah. What’s special about me? Anybody can do what I can do. That’s kind of the mentality. What combats that and what I have to continually remind myself of, is if I don’t do the self-promotion, if I don’t put myself out there a little bit, that means there are people or organizations that I’m just not going to help because they don’t know I exist. So that’s the battle for me. That’s that see-saw, or that teeter-totter for me. It’s learning and being comfortable with self-promotion but knowing, on the other hand, if I don’t do this, there’s going to be some people that don’t get the help that they really want. So it’s kind of a necessary evil for me and I’m getting more comfortable with it as I go. That’s struggles.

LR: Yeah. I hear you. You’ve been at this a while. I presume you’ve got years and years left in your career, but if you think about what you would like it to have all been about, what would you like your legacy to end up being?

JH: Well, first of all, I’d love to be known for “this guy makes amazing tacos.”

LR: Oh really?

JH: Yeah. That would be not a bad thing for me to be remembered by. Tacos are the thing for me. Outside of that, on a professional level, if I’m remembered as somebody who made people’s lives better, “he contributed, he helped. I’m better off for knowing him.” That’s about all I can ask. If I changed somebody’s life for the better or multiple people’s lives for the better – it’s a gift to be able to make a difference in somebody’s life in a positive way.

LR: So, lastly, what do you feel like it means to be an entrepreneur in this particular moment? What’s unique about, about entrepreneurship today do you think?

JH: I’m probably not the first person to say this, but there has never been a time in our society where the barriers to entry to becoming an entrepreneur have been this low and this cost-effective. You’ve got your own radio show as a podcast on iTunes. You’ve got your own television show on YouTube. You can write your own book and publish that and host it on your own website. You’ve got your own newspaper or magazine with a blog. So the barrier to entry, time, or technology or cost, it’s never been easier. This crazy notion of “I got to go out and get in my car, I got to spend an hour in traffic or more, to sit in this cubicle to work for somebody else and at the end of the day I got to go back out in my car and spend another hour in traffic before I get home,” it seems like we’re right on the cusp of that not having to be the only option that people have in order to make a healthy contribution to society.

Never before has it been so easy to do it. And the alternative of working for corporate America and traffic and cubicles and bosses and asking permission to take a vacation and all of those things that go along with that corporate lifestyle. Maybe we’re at a point where that doesn’t have to be the only answer for people coming out of high school or college or the military. I think there’s another way and that other way is starting and owning and running your own small business and it’s never been this easy or cost effective before in history.

LR: How exciting.

JH: Yeah, it really is. If you’ve got a message, there is no excuse for not getting it out there unless you’re an introvert and you just don’t know.

LR: And then you’ll find an excuse. Awesome.

JH: Right. Exactly.

LR: Awesome. Hey, thanks so much for joining us today.

JH: It’s a pleasure.

LR: Would you do as the honor of signing our wall?

JH: Oh, absolutely. What a great treat.

LR: Cool.

Want more Modern Ontrapreneur Podcast?

Check out the previous episode featuring business leader Destinee Berman.

The post Joseph Hollak: Build Success appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

“Tasks” are what allow you to marry the two.

In Ontraport and many automation platforms, tasks are built into automated workflows to essentially serve as reminders to your team to perform something manually at the appropriate time. When the team member completes the task, he or she can mark its outcome to instigate completion of the rest of the automated campaign.

Check out these creative ways some of our clients integrate tasks with their automated internal business processes to keep their workflows running smoothly.

1. Manual Application Review

HR and recruiting team members often have various tasks associated with reviewing job applications. Rather than having to constantly check an application queue, the team members can receive automated email notifications to review an application every time a potential hire submits one. Simply add a task as a step in your application campaign to email the HR team members of your choice. This helps ensure each applicant is receiving a consistent experience and that none of them fall through the cracks.

Tasks for manual application review aren’t just limited to recruiting. Say you created an event page and application form for a contest you’re hosting. Just add a similar task to your application campaign, and you’ll receive a notification every time you get a new entrant.

2. Payroll

Tasks involving sensitive information such as bank accounts and money transactions can both benefit from and be hindered by automation. While automation means consistency and reduced error, it also runs without questioning its processes — which might not be best when it comes to sensitive matters like payroll and bill paying. Experts often advise that if automated, these processes should still be looked over by a human eye when possible.

Tasks can be helpful in several ways when it comes to the checks and balances of these processes. For example, an employee could request that his or her payroll be checked over for possible errors by triggering a task to be sent to the payroll manager to check the calculations manually. A task might also be triggered by the payroll automation system so that an employee can look over it for errors.

3. Text Message Response

More than almost any other marketing medium, SMS (text messages) fosters the most immediate customer engagement. Think about it: Most people have their phones on them all day, every day — and the average cell phone user looks at his or her phone 150 times a day. That type of mobile addiction is why 95% of SMS messages are read within three minutes of receipt.

Integrating SMS into your marketing campaign will boost your ROI and engagement; however, many businesses neglect the responses that they receive via SMS. A simple reply or follow-up text from you could be the difference between your customers using your offer or ignoring it.

4. Send a Personalized Gift

Sending a special gift to your clients could be the crowning jewel in their overall customer experience. Whether you’re closing a deal with a new customer, celebrating a client’s anniversary, or enticing a prospect, a personalized gift is a great way to stay top-of-mind.

Delegating the task of physically purchasing or sending the gift is easy using tasks. As soon as a lead or client reaches a designated step in a campaign, you can create a task that automatically fires an email to your assistant with instructions and guidelines for exactly how to locate and send a gift. Your assistant can then mark the task complete using task outcomes.

5. Follow Up With Independent Contractors

One unique aspect of Ontraport tasks is that recipients don’t have to have a seat within your account to receive task notifications. Do you have a photographer who provides all the imagery for your blog or a contracted copywriter who writes all your landing pages? Send them task notifications directly to their personal email anytime you need their services. If your contractors have recurring work such as weekly blog content or landing page updates, tasks can be set to send out weekly or daily.

6. Physical Filing

Many companies are going digital with everything from video meetings to digital files, but there are still many industries utilizing the security of hard, physical copies that can’t be hacked or accidently deleted. Medical offices, Police Departments and voting establishments, for example, often still rely on printed documented and physical files.

While the act of filing can’t be automated, automated tasks can be triggered by patient requests, specific dates or post-appointment actions, reminding receptionists and front desk workers to print and file an important document. Like fully automated processes, these automated tasks help reduce human error and improve reliability.

7. Specific or One-off Emails

Hopefully your company is using an email automation tool to send your mass emails, but when an email needs to be sent with specific information, it’s usually left as a manual task for an employee. Certain triggers can be created for these types of emails. For example, when a lead fills out a form or someone requests your presskit, a task can be sent for the appropriate employee to promptly respond. They can then mark the task as completed to be sure no requests go unanswered.

8. Write a Thank You Note

It’s rare to receive a handwritten letter these days, so sending them to customers and leads really makes your business stand out. In fact, a recent study by the US Postal Service suggests that snail mail makes Millennials feel special — enter a new strategy for marketing to the younger generations.

If your team writes your thank you notes in-office, you can send a task to prompt them to write one when a new customer signs on, for customer birthdays and more. If writing handwritten letters isn’t feasible for your team, though, you can use the Ontraport integration with MailLift, a handwritten letter service that lets you automatically send personalized letters to your contacts.

9. Find Prospects on Social Media

A quick Google search on every new client who enters your system could be a goldmine of customer data. Perhaps the client has a large YouTube following that could lead to a great collaboration video, or their Instagram followers are your exact target audience. They could be great referrers for you.

Instead of spending hours online stalking your customers after they purchase, create a task that automatically sends a team member a notification to research a prospect as soon as the prospect fills out your opt-in form. This can be a great job for interns who are just learning your target demographic. You can then use that new information to send targeted messaging to specific leads.

The post 9 Creative Ways to Streamline Your Workflow With Task Automation appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

Use these guidelines to help determine whether your business is ready to automate some or most of its processes, which of those will be made more efficient using automation, and which are better served by the human touch.

Does a Human Do It Better?

DON’T automate it if it’s better done by a human, that is, if it requires any of the following:

• A unique skill set or expertise
• Critical thinking skills
• Decision-making abilities
• Creativity
• In-person interaction

The point of business process automation is not to replace humans but to enhance our work by helping eliminate inaccuracies and to do the types of tasks that underutilize our skills and are boring and tedious. You do not want to automate the kinds of tasks that require human engagement or connection-building.

The idea is to free up your team to focus more on the aspects of the business that require human touch and interaction, those things that require creativity, critical evaluation, or innovation. So be wary of trying to over-automate and complicate workflows. This can easily leave both your customers and employees frustrated or confused. Some tasks truly are more efficiently completed by people.

DO automate if it’s a mundane, repetitive task that doesn’t require the characteristics and skills listed above.

Most companies have many processes that can be automated — tasks that are generally considered boring or uninspiring for employees. Some of the traits of automation-friendly tasks include:

• Tasks that you perform regularly
• Tasks that are the same every time you do them
• Tasks that are tedious for humans to do because they are time-consuming and monotonous
• Tasks that are delegatable (can be done by anyone in your company given a clear set of instructions)

With software handling the busy work, you and your team will have more time to focus on more complicated problems, which means increased efficiency at a lower cost with less room for manual error.

Have You Defined and Documented the Process?

DON’T automate until you’ve documented the process, tested it manually, and refined it.

Before you’ll be able to improve your processes, you’ve got to define them. Make sure that you’ve gone through your processes manually so that you have each step documented, you can be confident that you understand how they work, and you have eliminated any unnecessary steps or inaccuracies. This is a crucial step, because once you’ve automated a system, it will be completed exactly as it’s been built to do, whether that process is correct or not.

If your business processes are still ill-defined or messy, or perhaps done a few different ways by a few different team members, you will want to take time to reach a consensus and define them clearly before ever considering whether to automate them. This can take some time, and you want to be sure that you and your team are on the same page.

DO automate if the above steps have been taken and it is clear that the process is automation-friendly.

Before automating a business process, it needs to be fine-tuned so that it is predictable and repeatable. Process Automation forces you to map out your processes and then to follow those maps. Doing so is a powerful exercise whether or not you plan to automate a process and one that every business owner should undertake at some point.

In addition to mapping and testing the steps of the process, you will want to record how much time it takes to complete a process manually and what the average cost per hour/day/month of that process is. This cost assessment is an important consideration when it comes to your bottom line. One of the main reasons to automate a process is so that it will yield a higher ROI.

Once you have documented and tested a process, it can then be refined and improved for potential automation.

Can You Justify Automation Based on Your Current Growth Rate?

DON’T automate if your business is just starting and you don’t have a steady flow of customers yet.

When you are in the first stages of getting your business going and working with your early customers, your business is in a period of establishing new processes and figuring out what works and what doesn’t. This is generally a time in which you are testing all your processes, rather than documenting and refining them. If your business is just getting off the ground, it’s a good idea to get a handle on your basic processes before considering which of those to automate. 

DO automate if you’re on the cusp of rapid growth.

If your business is fairly well established and is on the verge of a period of rapid growth, it is a good time to automate. Most likely, you have most of your processes in place and have been operating for a long enough period that you can easily define and document these processes. If you are in the midst of a growth spurt, you may already be having trouble keeping up with some of the administrative or repetitive tasks that your business requires.  The beautiful thing is that, once a process has been fine-tuned and handed off to automation, you’re in a better place to grow and scale at a faster rate because everything is precisely monitored and measured.

Do You Use an All-in-One System for Your Business Processes?

DON’T automate if you have disparate systems.

When you’re looking for information, do you have to search in multiple systems in order to access the data you need? Do you find that you have to enter data more than once to get it in all of your spreadsheets and databases? If you answered yes to either of those questions, then your systems aren’t integrated. It may not seem like a big deal, but it will be as your business grows. Think about how your processes will work when you are receiving much more data each day. If you are having to access multiple systems numerous times a day, it slows you/your team down significantly. If you don’t have integrated systems, this is the first place to start if you are considering business process automation.

DO automate if you have an all-in-one system.

In order for automation to work best, you need to be able to connect the dots between systems and ensure streamlined flow every step of the way. If you already have a single system in which all of your data is stored, and through which all or most of your critical processes are carried out, then your business is well primed for business process automation.

The post Using Automation When You’re Ready to Scale appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

However, just because your business does things a certain way doesn’t mean that those processes are the best way. In fact, you may not realize that your current systems lack efficiency in getting from Point A to Point B. If you’re finding yourself swamped with manual tasks, struggling to find the right online tools or operating without a way to track business performance, you may need a new solution: business process automation.

Business process automation (BPA) replaces expensive, manual systems managed by employees with low-cost, high-volume systems managed by software. Pesky manual tasks will be handled by efficient automated systems, and you can rededicate your focus to tackling other demands of your business.

If any of the following six indicators strike a chord with the challenges you’re facing within your business, it’s a sign that you’re ready to automate your business processes.

1. Your team is constantly making manual errors

When your employees execute repetitive tasks day in and day out — such as updating customer files, sending out follow-up emails or managing spreadsheets — human error is inevitable and expected. But when you offload those mundane tasks by automating them, human error is virtually eliminated.

Daily, weekly or monthly tasks that are performed the same way each time can usually be automated, no matter how big or small. This might sound like you’re replacing your employees with automation robots, but that’s not the case. You’re actually givinging your employees time to work on projects that cannot and should not be automated, such as creative tasks, in-person communication and decision making.

2. You need more time and employees but don’t have the resources

As if growing pains weren’t already enough of a strain on any business, being maxed-out in your day-to-day operations can completely stunt growth. The instinct is to hire more people to leverage your own time, but that’s not always possible. Onboarding and retaining new employees is extremely expensive, and most small businesses just don’t have those resources to spare when they’re in grow-mode.

The alternative is to automate your most time-consuming day-to-day operations — sending emails, creating reports, updating client information and more. This also creates stability within your business so that crucial tasks are always executed properly, and your clients always receive a consistent experience.

3. You rely too heavily on one employee

A rockstar employee who takes the burden off of your shoulders is every employer’s dream, but dependence on a single employee creates a slippery slope. Let’s say that your employee completely handles all of your client appointment scheduling. What happens when that employee is out of office or even decides to leave your company? You could be left in a lurch if you don’t know how to perform this person’s job or don’t have the time to take it on.

BPA allows you to partially or fully automate the process of tasks like booking client appointments so that you can successfully delegate responsibilities. This eases your business’s dependency on a single employee and sets you on the right path to scale.

4. You’re still using paper files, messy spreadsheets and disjointed systems

Having your data spread out between different employees, spreadsheets and systems can be a nightmare when you’re on a call with a client, generating reports, or just trying to find a specific piece of information.

That’s precisely why automation software is so effective — all your business data is in one place. Your customer contact records are connected to your email marketing which is connected to your sales numbers so that there are never data gaps or missing customer information. This is especially a concern if you’re relying on multiple tools to store your data. If just one of those tools breaks, it can result in clients receiving the wrong email messages, being charged for the wrong products, or losing valuable information. With a business process automation tool, it’s much easier to streamline your business and make the entire customer journey smooth and seamless.

5. You want to improve customer satisfaction

Without some degree of business process automation, it doesn’t matter how hard you try — you can’t guarantee an amazing customer experience every time. Imagine running a bakery without a system for baking cakes. Every day the cakes would come out a little different. Some days they’d be great, but sometimes they might come out subpar. Customers who love your cake would return only to discover that the cake doesn’t taste the same. That’s not a sustainable way to run a business.

The same is true in every area of your business. If you follow up with a new lead differently every time, the experience you’re delivering is going to be hit and miss. Some clients may find you prompt and professional while others may feel you’re dropping the ball and can’t be trusted.

Automation allows you to offer consistency throughout every interaction a customer has with your brand.

6. You need more insight into your business

When you implement business process automation software, you’re setting the foundation to gain invaluable insight into your business. BPA allows you to measure and track every single touchpoint along the customer journey in one place, providing priceless data about your leads and customers. For example, you could find out how many customers who visit your landing page and call in to your sales team on the same day have purchased your product in the last year. Without an all-in-one system for tracking website visits, selling your products and storing information about each sales call, you’d have to look in three different places to compile this information, and you’d have to process all that data by hand to find what you’re looking for.

Business process automation software gives you an in-depth understanding of how your business is performing day to day and functions as a centralized hub for your business growth.

The post It’s Time to Automate Your Business appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

We can probably also agree that forcing employees to do mundane things that they don’t like doing over and over again is a recipe for disaster. At the very least, it’s a recipe for high turnover. You can hire an employee to send prefabricated emails, update spreadsheets or send invoices, and that employee will grudgingly do the work because he needs the paycheck — until he finds a more interesting use of his time. But this is not the best use of his talent, and you both know that. You may even be doing these things yourself but, executing monotonous administrative tasks is likely not your greatest passion and not why you started your business.

If the above sounds remotely familiar to you, imagine a scenario in which you and your brilliant team members get to spend your time and energy working on the most important aspects of your business, such as high-level strategy, innovation and improving the customer experience — the things that add more value to your business.

This is where business process automation (BPA) comes in.

BPA is a way to eliminate manual, time-consuming and costly tasks within an organization and replace them with automated processes that are more efficient and work faster, while also reducing redundancy and overall operating costs. Implementing BPA helps enable teams to focus on moving the business forward instead of simply managing it. It’s the foundation of creating a sustainable, scalable, sellable business.

How Business Process Automation Works

Business process automation is essentially the engine that powers all the internal tasks that keep your company running. At its core, BPA is a sophisticated form of if/then logic. When you create an automated internal process, you control what you want to happen based on all the possible scenarios, and the automation platform takes it from there. This allows you to create dynamic, unique paths that deliver the right results and remind team members to take the right actions at the right times.

Every business can benefit from automating its most repetitive and mundane tasks – things that are generally done much faster and with more accuracy when done by a computer rather than a human. As your business grows, these types of tasks only increase, as does the likelihood that inaccuracies and mistakes will occur.

What Types of Processes Can You Automate?

Essentially anything requiring a routine intake, notification, approval process or manual handoff can be automated. Automation-friendly tasks are those that you perform repeatedly, that are the same every time you do them and that don’t require critical thinking to complete.

Examples of processes you can automate include:

• Appointment scheduling
• Marketing and sales outreach
• Customer communication
• Record keeping and management
• Employee recruiting and onboarding (HR)
• Events and media outreach (PR)
• Drafting and sending proposals and bids
• Payment and billing processes

All of that said, it’s important to carefully consider which actions are best left to people, which are OK to delegate to automation and which should be a hybrid. With the right combination of automated and non-automated tasks, you’ll find that you and your team will be able to focus on the most important aspects of your business without sacrificing quality.

How BPA Can Improve Your Business

Operational Efficiency

Efficiency, by definition, describes the extent to which time, effort and cost are effectively applied for the intended task or purpose. Business process automation reduces the time, effort and cost it requires to complete a task.

If you are critical of automating business processes because you are afraid it will replace the people who do them, it is important to understand that these virtual processes are used to assist rather than replace their human counterparts. In fact, it’s a win-win situation. Automation handles multiple tasks at a time, makes fewer mistakes than people do and works around the clock. And, without mundane tasks on their plates, employees can focus on more strategic and creative tasks.

This can help to increase your ROI by allowing employees to focus on what’s important rather than being mired with items that drain time and energy. One study found that implementing automation in the workplace generates 30-200% ROI in the first year, mainly in labor savings. This means that automation can increase your revenue by allowing your team to take on a greater workload without the added cost of more employees.

Employee Satisfaction

BPA can help utilize the true talent of your team. It’s all too common that talented people get hired for a job that requires specialized skills but end up spending much of their time doing monotonous or time-consuming administrative tasks. Few people want to spend their days on manual tasks that have nothing to do with their background or career goals.

Business automation can virtually eliminate those tasks from their workload, freeing your talent to do what it is they do best (and what they enjoy most). This increases employee satisfaction and retention in the long run.

Accuracy and Quality Control

A large percentage of processing mistakes are typically user-generated errors. These mistakes arise when manually inputting data and can be as simple as inverted numbers or typos. Automation ensures that every action is performed identically – resulting in high-quality, reliable results.

Since automation completes your business processes exactly the way you tell it to, it creates a level of consistency that allows you to spot trends or patterns and learn precisely how long tasks take. Similarly, it allows you to identify and fix gaps in your processes that you might not have otherwise noticed. You can then use that information to effectively plan ahead in your business.

Consistent Customer Service Experiences

Although BPA handles the internal tasks that are necessary for your company to run, many of those operations still contribute to your customers’ experiences. If you automate your customer service follow-up process, your customers will consistently experience the same level of service from your business. For example, when customers call in, their specific account information can be pulled up from the digital database within seconds. This makes it easier for customers to depend on your brand and makes working with your company far more user-friendly.

Whether it’s an automatic reminder to a team member to pay commissions to referrers or an automation that handles customers’ requests to change their stored credit card information, business process automation ensures that your customers are getting the most consistent positive experiences possible.

Accountability and Compliance

Business process automation gives you a better view of what’s going on with your projects and staff at any given time. You can track whether a team meets milestones or if they’re going to miss an upcoming deadline. The improved visibility also shows you whether you are over or underutilizing your human resources.

BPA can help you optimize your teams’ productivity over time so everyone works at peak efficiency. By design, this makes BPA a great tool for managers to have oversight of tasks completed, the amount of time spent on a project or any other metric they would look at for reviews, planning vacation time or setting goals. Documented and automated processes also allow managers to keep track of which employees are top-performers and which ones need coaching.

The post What Can Automation Do for You? appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.