Business automation, without the buzzword

Automation has been sold badly for long enough that most business owners assume it means replacing people. In practice it usually means removing the fourth place somebody retypes a phone number.

Start where the same data is entered twice

Every duplicate entry is a place where two records can disagree. Find those first. They are usually between the enquiry form, the sales sheet, and the billing system.

Automate the handover, not the judgement

Moving a lead from the website to the right salesperson with a due date is a good thing to automate. Deciding whether to discount is not. Keep people where judgement is needed and take the clerical work off them.

What good looks like after three months

• Nobody retypes a customer detail that the business already holds.
• Every lead has an owner and a next step with a date.
• The daily and monthly numbers come out of the system, not out of a sheet.
• A manager can see status without asking three people.

That is the whole ambition. It is not glamorous and it pays for itself faster than almost anything else you can buy. More on business automation in Nepal.