Rinse and Repeat

A few years ago, I was tasked with building a program for clients which they could use to track certain things. To start with, I need to caveat the previous statement by saying that I am not, nor will never be, a programmer. We knew an individual who was, and is, a genius at writing code, implementing applications, and other things needed to get a piece of software off the ground. The way it worked was I would come up with what we wanted to show the client and how it should function, then he would write the program, visualization, security protocols, etc.

What did I learn from working with him that business people can use to increase the efficiencies of their companies? I’d never developed something from the ground up that was a sell-able product, however, I did learn a very valuable lesson as it began to be rolled out.

The parameters of the software were to sell the product which processed, analyzed client data, and produced reports and graphics. My idea was that we needed a file for each client that we could copy and replicate when we on-boarded a new client. THAT WAS WRONG.

As he explained to me, the best way to produce the product was build something once, then standardize it for all clients. He wrote the programming once and combined the data for all clients.

• On a side note, if you believe your banking information raw data is separated from other raw data, think again, it's not. He wrote it the same way using security protocols just like the banks and credit card companies.

The clients then accessed their data based on the user's security protocols. It dramatically increased the on-boarding capabilities of new clients as we didn’t have to metaphorically re-invent the wheel each time.

Why is this important?

The answer is scalability and automation. Think of McDonald's or Amazon, or one of the companies that has grown tremendously. They’ve grown because of automation and scalability. They have automated tasks enough to have a “Rinse and Repeat” method which can grow without limitations. They don’t have to re-invent the wheel each time. When a new process is put in place, it is only done ONCE. That way they can increase without the burden of redoing the process. If you can put something in a bin or code something that increases efficiency, it will also increase your profits as well.

Think of things that could be automated in your company. Is it bill paying, is it tracking sales, is it automating customer reminders when an invoice is over 30 days old, is it on-boarding a client, is it tracking a sales campaign, or is it opening a retail store eight days sooner?

I was at a company a couple of years ago that has approximately 440 stores. They identified that there was a profit dollar value that could be assigned by opening a store 8 days earlier than they were currently opening. They were able to state equivocally, that by standardizing the store opening procedure, they could increase their income by $28,000. The time it took on the front end to standardize the process was paid for after the first, or second new store opening.

Today I was working on a mailing where the client wants to know certain statistics each week. I could have taken the spreadsheet each week and recalculated the ratios based on the prior week’s responses. However, it took a few minutes to create a query that automatically calculated the response rate and some other statistics. It took about five minutes to build, and now I don’t have to do anything else to get the client their statistics other than press a button.

I was studying this week about Bill.com, Hubdoc, and QuickBooks. These are three programs that can be used to automate back-office processes and increase profits.

Bill.com is a cloud-based Payment management Platform that automates, streamlines, and controls your payment process. The application decreases manual check writing.

Hubdoc is software that can automatically manages yours, or your client’s documents and receipts, and reduce manual data entry. It uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify and input receipt numbers, and other documents into systems.

QuickBooks. We should all know by now about QuickBooks. It’s a simple easy to use accounting system which can manage invoice, payments, and payroll. It’s the standard for small to medium size businesses.

Whatever it is, if you can standardize a process, in particular in the back-office, you will be more profitable, and when you get that growth spurt you won’t be caught off guard.