An Introduction to Automating Your Business

Automation has touched every aspect of people’s lives, starting from the way they prepare their meals and all the way to their dealings with others. It has also become the necessity of businesses regardless of its size. Be it through a small application or a full-fledged enterprise system, automation will help you survive the currently tough and highly competitive market. If you have not started automating your business already, this guide is for you.

Why Automation Helps Wholesalers

Wholesalers and liquidators should seriously consider automating their business operations even if they only have online storefronts. Why, you ask? Mainly because you can get the following benefits.

Streamlining Business Communication

Emails are the essence of online businesses, especially since they allow you to communicate with potential buyers and suppliers. If you have software to help you handle your emails, especially for distributing newsletters or carrying out your email marketing operations, your work will become much easier.

Streamlining your communications on-site will also be an added advantage if you own a medium to large business. With multiple departments within your company, you need to ensure that everyone works together without them being physically in the same room. Therefore, have an app filter emails or carry out instant chats to discuss work.

Boosting Accountability

Nothing can ruin your business’ reputation than not being accountable for your actions, be it while dealing with clients or with employees. Automation can help you with this aspect. For instance, by automating customer complaints, you will have this information properly documented. As a result, your employees will not sweep issues under the carpet and will grow more dedicated to your customers. This, in turn, increases customer loyalty and ultimately increases your revenue potential.

Minimizing Costs Due to Human Error

Human error has the potential to cost you more than you ever expected. If you forget deadlines or payment due dates, chances are that you may lose the pallets you wanted or the clients you had worked hard to acquire. In both cases, you can kiss goodbye to a lot of financial opportunities. On the other hand, automating these, be it by even a simple calendar app, rest assured that you will make the right decisions at the perfect time.

Allowing Easier Analysis of Your Current Position and Future Plans

One of the most convenient aspects of automating a business is being able to collect data through the software used. By having an additional application that analyzes metrics, you can get insights into how your business is doing and even start developing ideas to improve your current standing. If your business is currently small, you may be shrugging off the idea of complex metrics and tracking. However, the quicker you embrace this, the better you will be able to assess your business’ strengths and weaknesses and then tackle both.

How to Start Automating Your Business

Automating your wholesale or liquidation business will not happen overnight. You will need to spend a considerable period of time to initiate this process and then some more to carry it out. However, though it can be a hassle it first, you will make up for the lost time (and funds) within months of integrating software systems and apps. To get you started on the long journey of automating your business, here are some important tips you should remember and implement.

Start with the Easiest Processes First

Though you may be enthusiastic about automating your business, you need to start slowly and steadily. The first thing to tackle will be the simplest processes since these can be handled manually and without the high risk of human error. Allowing your developer to work on the simplest processes will also help them understand your business before they can start automating major functions. This will spare you from wasting their efforts and your time.

Establish a Culture that Embraces Automation

Regardless of your business’ size, you should start getting your employees involved and tell them about your future automation plans. Now you may face some resistance, especially from older workers who are used to traditional methods. However, it is your duty to train them and create an environment that supports them as they learn.

To sell the idea, you will also need to hold formal or informal meetings to talk about the benefits of automation for both the company and the employees. Especially focus on the latter and emphasize how software can complement their work and help them grow into higher-level positions.

Focus on Consolidating Processes into a Single Feature

Processes start collapsing once you begin automating. For instance, if you automate managing the books, a small bit of code will automatically calculate your cash flow and your expenses. This information can later be used for generating financial reports, determining your profits, and other similar procedures. As a result, you get tremendous value and manage to save time. The software will save this data and you can always access it to carry out information that needs it.

Integrate Proper Documentation Facilities

As you know by now, you need to have all the data you use and whatever the system generates for your business functions. Therefore, your software system should be able to document everything you do, starting from what you had spent, the results you got, etc. for every deal you take on. By forgoing this little detail, you may end up terminating projects that provide high return on investment (ROI) just because they seem unprofitable on the surface. Documentation also helps you celebrate your success and prove to your employees that their efforts have not been in vain.

Consider Automating Your Marketing As Well

Marketing is one of the aspects of your business that will require your attention throughout. Luckily, you can easily automate this process to streamline all of your operations. For instance, if you have a blog on your company’s website, you can always have an application that posts your posts on your behalf according to a schedule you set. All you will need to do is create the posts and then upload them to the system.

Similarly, you can automate your email marketing and social media marketing efforts. For the first, you can have a system that sends emails to generate leads or follow up on existing clients to engage them. As for the second purpose, social marketing software will help you update your social media platforms simultaneously and that too from one place. The software may also alert you whenever someone responds, helping you optimize your response time and ensuring your clients’ satisfaction.

Make Sure to Automate Your Inventory

In addition to your business procedures, you should automate your inventory. This is especially true if your liquidation business has a physical store as well because errors can cost you a lot. If you overstock or under stock your inventory, you will either waste your money or lose your clients.

Do Not Forget to Automate Your Customer Support

Support issues are bound to arise, especially since you deal with refurbished or used items. If you want to spare yourself the hassle of worrying about customer support, you can always automate this process. The least you can do is have a special email for this purpose and then forward it to the personnel responsible. If you can afford something more elaborate, you can always try to integrate Follow-Me systems to connect callers to a live agent regardless of where they may be.

Choose the Best to Handle Your Automation Process

If you plan to get a customized solution rather than buy a generic application, selecting the best person for the job is one of the biggest steps to take towards automating your business. If this is the first time you are dealing with a software developer, here are the factors you should assess the professional by:

• Experience – Experience matters in automating businesses. If this is the developer’s first time, chances are that they may not know as much about your needs. Therefore, always look for someone who has worked with other members from your niche.

• Skill – In addition to having good development skills, your developer should have excellent analytical skills to assess your needs and come up with the best solution quickly.

• Dedication – You need a developer who can become dedicated to your business. This little factor is usually neglected, forcing businesses to deal with a faulty, non-comprehensive system. So assess how invested the developer seems the minute you pitch them your project.

• Knowledge About Your Business – The best developer for automating your liquidation business is one who actually understands it. This will spare you from having to explain about what you do and what you expect the system to do for you.

You can add your own criteria to the list, but making up your mind according to the aforementioned four will put you on the right track.

Common Mistakes You Should Avoid

Whether you plan on developing software or buying a generic app for automating your operations, you need to steer away from a few mistakes.

Attempting to Automate an Untested Process

You should avoid trying to automate a process that has not been defined clearly or is yet to be tested. If you do not understand one aspect, you cannot expect an outsider to either. So, define all your expectations and which processes should be automated first and avoid those which you are still trying to grasp.

Automating a Useless Process

Automation should help you weed out inefficient processes rather than include them to your new system. If you are adamant on adding a process that offers no use, you will only be expanding the inefficiency of your process, countering the effect of the steps you have taken so far.

Not Briefing Your Developer Thoroughly

Before contacting a developer, you need to create a document listing the primary purpose behind your choice to automate your business. You should include everything that comes to your mind about the system and how you want to benefit from it. Once you have the essential information in writing, organize it with proper headings then hand it over to the developer. Let them go over your document then call them in to present your points and discuss the features you want and they can include in the system.

Not Understanding Your Company’s Financial Standing

You need to be fully aware of where your liquidation business stands when it comes to finances. This will help you calculate the monetary value of your business, establishing a sort of metric that you can use to measure your success in the future. Besides, knowing your business’ monetary value allows you establish a technology budget that you can discuss with your developer to determine which basic features you can get and which you can delay for later.

Miscalculating the Costs of Automation

Even the most money-savvy individuals may fail to accurately calculate the cost of automation. Initially, you will be paying a hefty sum for developing and implementing the software. However, you should also calculate the losses you will be incurring while your whole business is being automated. You should also factor in the cost of ongoing maintenance and updates.

The first is very important or else your system may fail you when you need it the most. Meanwhile, updates are as essential since they allow you to keep your business afloat and up to date with the latest technologies and industry changes.

Forgetting About the Human Element

While machines will be processing everything, they will require human input. Therefore, you need to brief your staff and inform them of their roles once the automation process is completed. You can ask the developer to come up with a user’s manual or, better yet, an interactive step-by-step guide to teach users how to take advantage of the benefits of the new system.

The Bottom Line

Now that you have a good idea on how to automate your business, do not waste any more time and take your business to the 21st century. Remember, automation simply speeds up pre-existing processes. So make absolutely sure you have rock solid foundations to build on, as automating a faulty process will only make mistakes happen at a faster rate! And that’s all, folks.

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