So you want to automate your business with tech? I will share my thought as a services vendor for this with pitfalls to avoid.

Automating the right way

How should you approach a vendor and what should you do for a business between revenues of 3 million to 100 million- this is done after reviewing what my clients do and how you can perform better.

Summary List, and navigation:

1. You will need to put aside at least 2 hours a week for this automation
2. Shop around for Vendors
3. Pay to do scoping and business analysis, including an on-site visit
4. Get a detailed feature breakdown along with user stories for the sprints
5. The software takes times unless templated, expect 3 versions
6. This is an investment, do not cheap out on it
7. The best way is a fixed monthly budget for 2 years with a monitoring process
8. Do not make changes during development, wait till its done, this is why we create UX screens
9. The first version changes by 60% eventually, this is why the 6 months, as the actual development, is usually done in 3 months for a functionality
10. Sometimes a combination of off-the-shelf software makes more sense, be open

Step by Step

1. If you are eager to implement automation in your business, we can start with a weekly call with me for around 2 hours. At this stage, it is ideal to engage yourself in the micro-processes and not delegate the task to your employees. This is essential for building the right infrastructure. However, we will maintain close collaboration with your relevant project managers to focus on the validations of essential business processes. Nevertheless, the final validations will require your approval.

2. Shop around. Avoid fixating on a familiar software vendor, or the first one which resonates with you. Although scouring for vendors is time-consuming and capital-intensive, you will get a better idea of their companies and their proposals. As a result, you can compare and select the vendor best suited to your needs. I suggest looking for a minimum of 20 companies before you zero in your ideal vendor. A word of advice: try some of the smaller companies that will dedicate more time and resources to personally manage your needs. However, be watchful of the risks associated with such companies as they lack experience and it can end up requiring you to intercede and micromanage the tasks yourself. What do you look for in a team?

• Is the Founder talking to you?
• Meet their tech, and see if he/she understands your idea and strikes up a conversation.
• Are they conscious of cybersecurity and its necessity?

Cyber Security is very important

• Do they also contribute ideas to your product? This is evidence of their critical thinking which is an invaluable tool for the day-to-day activities in your business.

What not to look for?

• Every company is different even in the same industry. Notwithstanding my experience in the industry, my automation services may not be seamless against the benchmark of your current manual workflow.
• How many employees do they have? If they have 6+ employees, they can do the job.

3. Pay me for a scoping and business analysis and have patience. Quality comes at a price that will ultimately benefit your business in the long run.

When you allowing me to scope, it helps me to analyse your business needs and propose diligent solutions. Also, I need to arrange proper resources, including an independent industry consultant. In addition to this, I will need to conduct an on-site visit that will help me in understanding your business operations and observing and documenting the manual workflow. As a result, we can cut down on a lot of tedious re-development and also alleviate automation anxiety.

4. Ask your vendor to create a detailed breakdown of the feature list. Once it’s done, validate it. Make sure to focus on User stories and other similar features. In addition, see if they are using modular technologies like React, as this will save you technical debt as you grow.

5. Creating software from scratch is time-consuming. Unless it is created using an existing template, it takes up a lot of time. Generally, it requires around 3 versions to reach a fully functional system. Each version takes around three months, and usually, this is done parallelly as each further version for me implies less resources allocation.

6. Remember to keep patience. Approach us with a vision of 3 years to automate. Usually, each phase will need about 6 months. Meanwhile, allow your employees to adapt to the culture of change.

As I mentioned before, quality requires time and a budget. To be perfectly candid, my best solutions were for the clients who provided adequate financing and a reasonable timeline. However, even if you are cash strapped, I will always try and assist you.

7. How you prepare a budget depends on who you work with. For me, curating the finest, most lucrative solution for you will require extensive R&D. Hence, the best way forward is to set a fixed monthly budget for the next 2 years. This is necessary because:

a) After the project is done, I will face no burden to retain you.

b) It dedicates a fixed team to focus on your project without distractions.

c) It will also create a satisfactory, trustful relationship between us.

d) It will establish a stable give and take relationship between us. While you helped to stabilise my business with a recurring CF, I will go the extra mile to provide quality services to you and retain our collaboration even further.

Having Trust is Important

Set some ground rules and standards for transparency. For three months, I will provide the utmost clarity regarding the resources and hours we are allocating to your project. Moreover, you can also have access to a daily report which I receive. In addition to this, you can also be a part of the scrum meetings and still get indications of weekly scopes and deliverables along with Monthly Sprints and Timeblock Strategies — 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years and 5 years.

This way, our relationship can evolve from a mere supplier-vendor exchange to a more durable collaboration.

It is also possible to set a monthly budget and assign a reporter who will keep you up to date with the process.

Validate the UX

8. Before we get started, I will create UX screens. Make sure to validate them, as it is likely that I will stick to them. Avoid introducing any changes during the development phase- after it is done, we can head over to modifications. As a result, you can save up to 80% of development time.

9. Ideally, about 60% of the first version changes during the course of the development. Hence, we ask you to provide us with a 6-month timeline. This is because we require 3 months to provide you with a polished version of the product and the remaining 3 months to make it suit your needs and watch the process in action.

10. On some occasions, I will suggest you use off-the-shelf software. A much budget-friendly option, such software can provide the same functions like customised software. Hence, they are not always necessarily dispensable.

Sometimes Ready-Made is better than Made-To-Order

From the perspective of a software vendor, here are my thoughts on how you should get the ball rolling with automation. If you want to discuss more, I am happy to help.

If you are ready then connect with me here and we can discuss more how I and my team can work with you towards automation.

I am the founder of Vast Dreams where we design intelligent systems to make your data work for you.

Get help with your Software Solutions: vastdreams.com

#automation #RPA #IoT #SME #BusinessGrowth #Software

Shout out to Probali for making my sentences sound better!