First steps to automate business. Where to begin?

Introduction

If you are reading this article, you probably already heard about the benefits of automated business. Organized work with employees and customers, increased workflow efficiency, increased profits ... Not surprisingly, so many companies want to automate their business as soon as possible. That's just not always able to do it right.
After all, usually everything happens as? The company acquires a special program, begins to implement it and faces difficulties. For example, it turns out that employees do not want to switch to an unusual system for them, and organized business processes are not easily transferred to the strict framework of tables. In the end, it all ends with the fact that the system is not used in full force, or even completely abandoned and returned to the usual Excel.
Such examples make the management think seriously before installing the system in their company. And this is for the best: the program is really able to take into account the requirements of the business as much as possible, but for this they still need to be presented. That is - to make a technical task.
Compilation usually takes a lot of time. It is necessary to understand which processes should be automated and what to pay attention to first and foremost. To do this, you can use employees, attract experts from the side - but still remain without the desired result. In order not to miss important points and use the program effectively, you need to clearly define a plan of action. That is why the Client Base team has created this beginner's guide. If you plan to transfer your business to modern systems, but are not sure yet where to start, then all you need to do is answer the questions set out in stages below.

Step 1. Business processes

First of all, you need to understand what the automation system will work with. First you need to answer the following questions:

• What actions do company employees do?
• What causes problems in these actions?

For example, consider the most common actions in companies:

1. The operator accepts the application, makes it to the list of orders;
2. The manager receives a new order, coordinates it and issues an invoice for payment;
3. The accountant accepts payment and sends the order to production;
4. Production receives order data and executes it;
5. The manager submits the order to the client.

If everything happened as quickly in practice as it was read! But in any process there are difficulties, and the management, of course, is difficult to track everything from beginning to end. But much of this routine could be entrusted to an automation system. For example, from the list you can see that no process can do without working with data. So, first of all, attention should be paid to creating a single database.

Tips:

First of all, you need to automate problem areas that delay the work of the entire organization.

For each process, it is necessary to determine the employees responsible for it and the supervisor. The problem can be solved faster if you know exactly who is responsible for the case at each stage.

It is better to build processes so that all data and terms from the beginning of the project to its completion are transferred between the participants automatically.

Step 2. Tables

Data is the valuable property of any enterprise that needs to be properly handled. That is, money, of course, can be stored in cabinets, but it was not for nothing that safes were invented. So the data collected in one database and reliably protected will allow you to work much more efficiently and not to think every time about where you saved this or that information. Therefore it is necessary to solve:

• What data does the company work with?
• What parameters can they be distributed?

Once again look at the basic actions of employees in the case of our example. To organize work with the client, it is necessary to have contact information and a history of working with him. In the management process, you need a list of previous assignments of employees, their personal data and contact information. To fulfill the applications, it is necessary to see their description and appointed dates. It will be more convenient to keep track of timely payment of bills if they are gathered together.
It turns out that the data need to be reduced by parameters such as:

• Customers
• Applications
• Employees
• Accounts

Thus, we have 4 main tables. Now consider the list of fields. For example, in the “Clients” table you need to collect the name, details, contact numbers and addresses, the name of the contact person. In the table "Employees": name, position, salary, date of receipt, contact information. In the table "Applications" will be filled with a description of applications, information about those responsible for implementation, deadlines, status. The name of the organization to which the invoice was issued, the amount including and without VAT, the part paid and the balance will be recorded in the “Account”.

Tips:

It is very important to monitor the timely filling of the database - information not submitted on time may be necessary when other sources are not available.
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It is not necessary to make the table immediately for all occasions. It is better to start with the most important ones, test them, polish them and only then add the following.

Use related fields. So the data from one table will not have to be duplicated to another: the associated fields will be filled in automatically. For example, the list of clients can be compiled once in one table - in all other fields that need such data, they will be filled without additional efforts.

Step 3. Access

Not all data is suitable for open access, and this is not only due to security. Even if the trust in the company's employees is unlimited, you still need to try to protect them from unnecessary and distracting information. To do this, you need to understand:

• What groups of employees are involved in the company's business processes?
• What data does each group work with?

Select the main groups of employees and see how each of them works with data. For example, managers need only “lead” their clients, and the director needs to follow the work of the entire department. Therefore, in this case, the director needs to see all the fields in the “Clients” table, and managers only part.
It must be remembered that some groups need not only to follow the information, but also to edit it. For example, accounting simply need to be able to edit fields for payment.

Tips:

For each group you need to make a list of fields for viewing and editing. Everything else will be closed by default.

In addition to access to the fields, you need to think about access to add or delete records, export or import data, access to reports.

Step 4. Patterns

Any company has the basic documents that are filled by employees constantly. For example, accounts in which the manager manually adds the amounts and order items. In fact, most of this documentation is based on the same samples, so automating this process will help save a lot of time. Therefore, define:

• What documents are used in the company most often?
• What data for these documents is already collected in tables?

Let's collect the main documents (for example, invoices, offers, contracts, bids) and mark the text, which should be changed. What data from the database should fall into it? For example, in the invoice you need to tighten the details, product name and amount. This means that these fields should be tied to it.

Tips:

Templates should be made as flexible as possible, leaving only the main text unchanged. The remaining information will be automatically substituted. This will save employees from the "paperwork", and the documents themselves - from errors and typos.

Often in a template it is necessary to substitute data that was not taken into account in the table before. For them, you can always add new fields.

Even the most complex contract can be reduced to a single template simply by adding different conditions to it. Therefore, it will be more convenient to combine several similar contracts into one.

Step 5. Mailing

Now you need to think about how the company maintains relationships with customers. Does she have special promotions and events? Do you congratulate customers on holidays? If yes, then you will need the opportunity to send information about this via e-mail or SMS.
When performing such work manually, you can safely reorganize the company into a postal branch office - only this will leave the employees working time. How to be? First, you need to answer the following questions:

• How often and at what time the company will be able to conduct mailings? How often do news appear that will be of interest to customers?
• In which cases it is better to use mail, and in what cases - SMS?

After planning the frequency and method of distribution, you need to create the main text that the program will add to the specified information. It is necessary to carefully consider the text of mailings in advance. For example, the system can substitute both a male name and a female one in a message, but the meaning of the text should not suffer from this.
In addition, the recipient, of course, wants to feel: this particular letter was sent to him, the organization really cares about its ability to follow the news. To avoid the "pattern", you can create a newsletter in the style of letters that were sent manually before automation.

Tips:

General information must be contained in the text itself. No need to overload the template with pictures and heavy files. Most users prefer to disable add-ons, which means that for them the essence of the letter will remain unclear. Far not everyone will find it intriguing - rather, just close it and not take advantage of the offer.

With mass mailings it is worth thinking about spam lists. In order not to get into them, you need to pay attention to the ability of the client to unsubscribe from the list at will. In this case, the option should be obvious - for example, in the form of a designated link in the letter.

Also, when planning mailings, you should take into account the server's limit on the number of letters sent per hour (on free servers - per minute). As a rule, after reaching the maximum number of letters, the server blocks the account. To avoid this situation, it is better to distribute the newsletter for several cycles.

Do not conduct mailing too often and without any special reason. Firstly, it annoys subscribers, and secondly, it is unlikely that someone will be interested in uninformative letters. If you have confidence in planning, you can warn about the frequency of mailings at the subscription stage - for example, with the phrase “Our weekly newsletter”.

Step 6. Reminders

Changes in the company's database occur regularly, and employees need to be informed quickly and targetedly. The exchange of business information should be available, even if we are talking about branches located in different cities. The main purpose of reminders is to quickly respond to ongoing processes. For example, after the operator places an order in the table from a client, the manager should receive a notification of the receipt of a new order and proceed with his work. The reminder can be reflected on the desktop of the program, come by e-mail or SMS.
In order to organize the process of sending reminders, you need to know:

• What changes need to notify employees?
• What should these alerts look like?

Let's review the list of basic actions again and find several examples of possible reminders: “You have added a new task”, “The project deadline is coming to an end”, “The order status has changed”.

Tips:

Reminders should be informative, so that at a glance it was clear what was going on. Therefore, you need to specify more specific information within the text. Agree, there is a difference between “Order status has changed” and “Order status No. XX has changed from A to B”.

Send reminders should only be necessary. You should not create reminders for minor changes or send them to those whom they do not concern. Employees simply "drown" in them and stop responding on time.

Step 7. Calculations

In their activities, many companies use certain formulas. For example, almost everyone uses a calculation like "Amount = Quantity x Price". But there are more complex formulas. For example, to calculate the cost of orders, where you need to use logic.
If you automate this process, the program will automatically calculate the required fields in the tables using a given formula. To come to this, answer the following questions:

• What tables need calculated fields?
• What formulas will the program calculate?

After the specified parameters, the calculations will be made by themselves. There is nothing to be counted and entered manually, which means that the number of errors will decrease many times.

Tips:

First of all, the calculations that were previously stored in Excel or other programs can be transferred to the automation system.

It will be more convenient to start with simple calculations, complicating them as you master the automation system.

The data necessary for calculations can be taken not only from the current table, but also from related tables. To do this, do not forget to affix the necessary connections.

Step 8. Reports

It would seem that periodic reports in companies are compiled without this automation. Does the system need help in instantly generating them? The key word here is instantaneous. Transparency of the organization’s business processes is not only the accuracy of the data, but also the speed at which they are received. So, of course, needed. Therefore, we define:

• What data will be used for instant reports?
• What form will it be easier to view?

Accurate information about the work done by employees, provided at any time convenient for management, will help to quickly analyze the current state of affairs. To do this, it is enough to request the system to generate a report on a database from any tables for any process.

Tips:

It is necessary to determine the parameters that can be changed during the formation of the report - for example, by period or by groups of employees.

Do not overload instantly compiled reports with complex information. Their main task is to quickly familiarize themselves with the current situation in order to immediately respond to possible difficulties.

You can make reports easy to read. For example, visualize them using various graphs and charts.

Conclusion

Thus, answering the above questions, you will see:

• what business processes need to be automated in your company;
• what data can be combined into a database;
• how to differentiate access to this data;
• which templates to combine documentation;
• how to organize mass mailings and reminders;
• which calculations are more convenient to perform automatically;
• what reports need to be generated instantly.

Specific ideas for each of the items just make up your technical task. It can be handed over to developers, who will determine the time and cost of developing the automation system you need. Or, as an option, you can use the ready-made designer and create the system yourself.
This concludes the introductory instruction. We hope that our advice will help automate your business quickly and at no extra cost!