The Age of Integration and Automation
Maximizing operational efficiency by integration and automation
Why integration and automation?
Nowadays the majority of computer applications are being hosted on cloud platforms. As there is no single application that can fulfill all kinds of needs, a business normally subscribes to different applications from different service providers at the same time. The most common applications are email, document management, collaborative workspace, project management, and office suite. Over the years, most people are used to the ways they use computer applications without seriously thinking about possible improvements, such as making applications work together to minimize or even eliminate human intervention. For example, everyday people spend a lot of time managing the inbox of their email applications manually, such as moving new emails to different folders for future follow-up, forwarding emails to keep others informed, storing the attachments for future reference, and searching for old emails to work on some tasks or projects. Actually, a lot of time and manual effort can be saved by integration and automation. In terms of integration, it means data can flow between systems without any human intervention. In terms of automation, it means the operation on data can be predefined so that the operation can be executed automatically to avoid any human errors. As a result, through integration and automation, the overall operational efficiency of a business can be maximized, costs can be reduced and human errors can be eliminated.
Choose the right integration and automation system
There are lots of integration and automation systems in the market. To choose the right one, some criteria need to be considered and compared. Based on my experience in integration and automation, they should cover at least the five criteria below.
- The number of supported applications — Currently there is a huge number of applications available in the market, a good integration system should be able to support an extensive number of applications, in addition to the most popular ones. Development works should also be constantly spent on discovering new applications to integrate with. Otherwise, the integration system cannot provide full integration for businesses.
- User interface — Integration and automation can be very complicated, but they can be made simple by providing a user-friendly interface. A good integration tool should provide an advanced graphical user interface, yet easy to operate and follow. So that those who do the integration can focus on the configuration and development, instead of working on the low-level coding which is time-consuming and difficult to follow.
- Integration capability — In addition to a good graphical user interface, a good tool should also offer a lot of integration options to choose from. The number of integration options reflects the capability of an integration tool. With a strong integration capability, applications can be fully integrated.
- Templates availability — Templates availability is one form of support for the users. To minimize the efforts of the users in developing new integration and automation between different applications, the solution providers should be able to provide a large number of templates for users to choose from or allow the templates to be shared in a user community.
- Pricing and usage visibility — Since most of the solution providers charge the users by the usage, the pricing should be flexible and the users should be able to monitor the overall usage clearly and easily. Otherwise, the users may hesitate to subscribe to the services since they cannot control their costs in subscribing to the services.
Five integration scenarios using Integromat
Among all integration solutions in the market, Make can fulfill the criteria mentioned above. Here are five use cases using Make.
Gmail to Google Sheets
Email is one of the most popular applications nowadays. But people cannot use it efficiently without using an integration tool. For example, every day people receive a lot of emails, but only some of them are important. Instead of reading through all the emails to find out the important ones, people can use a tool to filter all the emails and just attend to the important ones. By using Make, based on the names of the senders or some keywords in the email title/content, email items can be filtered and stored on a Google Sheet. As such, people just need to read through the Google Sheet to find out the important emails for follow-up. If the number of emails is huge, further integration can be added to the Google Sheet for automatic analysis and then the results can be presented to humans finally.
Twitter to Google Sheet
Twitter is good for learning from others or following opinion leaders. When someone chooses to follow people and mark their tweets as “liked”, they may want to store the tweets they have liked for future reference. Instead of storing those tweets manually, they can use Make to check for all tweets marked with “liked”. Make can easily filter the tweets by some criteria, such as those marked with “liked”, and then store the tweets to a Google Sheet. Once the tweets are stored on Google Sheets, they can be easily analyzed, such as grouping by authors or by topics.
Gmail attachments to Google Drive
It is quite common that people do not manage email attachments in systematic ways. Therefore they find it quite difficult to discover the attachments from old emails. Some of the email attachments may be related to instructions, company policies, guidelines, etc. If being managed well, it can save a lot of time when people need to refer to them in their daily work. By using Make, email attachments can be stored in cloud storage, such as Google Drive. Once they are stored separately, people can browse or search for them effectively.
ManyChat to Google Calendar and Android
It is becoming popular that businesses to provide chatbot services for engaging customers. The chatbot may answer the customer’s queries directly or make an appointment with the customer. This kind of process can be further integrated and automated by connecting a chatbot, such as ManyChat, to a calendar and a mobile device. For example, when ManyChat receives an appointment from a customer, the appointment is saved to a Google Calendar and a notification is sent to an Android device. Therefore a support staff with the Android device is informed about the appointment and takes appropriate actions accordingly.
Trello to-do list
Trello is a project/task management system for individuals and small groups. When new project tasks are added, a task list with cards is populated under the corresponding project. The project members can check their tasks on the cards or set some alerts as reminders. In order not to overlook any tasks, Make can integrate Trello with Todoist. Todoist is strong in organizing tasks so that nothing will be missed.
Summary
The five scenarios demonstrated above are simple and easy to build. They can also be further expanded to integrate with more applications to serve the needs of a big organization. From a personal perspective, integration of applications can greatly improve productivity; from a business perspective, it can improve the overall operational efficiency and thus save costs by reducing the size of the workforce. If you would like to look for external support to do the integration, you may find an authorized partner from Make. First of all, you may sign up through the referral link here to access the services. You can do some tests by subscribing to the free plan.
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