4 Steps to Automate Your Critical Workflows
Rather than complaining about your pain-points, let’s address the areas that cause you problems. By doing this, it will allow you to prioritize your issues and fully commit to jumping on board with your new automated work flow.Transcription
There’s a 4-step process that we take customers through.
The first is to identify your exact pain points in a quantifying manner. Instead of saying, “Man, this sucks. Everything’s broken.”, you got to talk about, “It takes three hours for us to do the spreadsheet every week.” Identify the tasks and the quantity of pain that is embodied in that task. Step one is get really specific clear about your pain points.
The second is now to prioritize those. Of these pain points, what do we care most about? Here what you’re developing is your asset, your defense against the onslaught of sales calls you’re going to get once you start putting your head up when people know your solution. So you know your pains, you have them prioritize and you know which are most important in your company.
The third is now you go talk to the vendors and you present them with this prioritized list of problems you have. You’re in control now. You’re not following their script that they practice for the last three years. They’re having to meet your needs and if they can’t address your needs, they’re a bad partner and fire immediately. You just stop talking to them. Eventually, through this process, you’ll find the right fit. You’ll find the closest fit. If there’s something off the shelf that’s going to fit, you’ll find it. This is the most critical point.
If this is the right fit for you, now then you got to totally commit. You’ve got to jump in and trust them and go. This is where a lot of projects fail. It’s like you found your pains you prioritize them, you found the right partner and you’re like yeah, we’ll do a test run. We’ll just see how it goes and what ends up is a zombie implementation where you have four or five people trailing it, they kind of get it up and running, but you’re not really committed. The other process is still working and no one wants to change. If you’re an employee and you’re presented with the process you’ve always had or new process that might be better but you’re not skilled at, you’re going to stick with your process. There has to be a critical “Guys where you’re going” or jumping. And when that happens and everyone’s committed and they know they’re not going to get fired because it’s a new system and management’s ready to change, that’s when success happens.