Day 20: How much is your time worth?
21 Days of Automation
Time is your most important resource. I bet you agree.
When running a company, you’ll find that what puts you ahead of your competitors is your ability to efficiently get more done in less time, and every second count!
What if there was a way to make your workflows easier and faster and automate and align redundant tasks? Well, there is!
Zapier provides an extremely easy mode of automation for busy SaaS teams. It automatically transfers data between your web apps, creates efficient workflows, and gives you precious time to focus on other pressing issues.
How does Zapier work?
With just a few clicks, you can link and integrate your web apps so that they can share info with workflows called Zaps. This way you can do more, and the beauty of it all lies in its simplicity. Not a single line of code is required to get it going!
You can use Zaps to connect your everyday work apps. All it takes is to set a trigger which will result in one or more actions. For example, you could set up a Zap trigger in your email app so that once you get an email, a certain action can be done, say copying any attachment in the email to your cloud storage app. Yet another action can be set up in this same Zap, say alerting you of this action in your work chatroom.
What tasks should you automate?
It’s a given that some tasks require human attention. But some chores would be undoubtedly more efficient if they were automatically done. So what’s the difference? Here are four clues to help you identify those company tasks that need to be automated.
- Is the task repetitive?
If a task has to be performed recurrently, following the same steps over and over again, you’d be better off automating it.
- Is the task time-consuming?
Consider how much time is spent performing that particular task, as well as how many times it has to be done. Now, estimate how long it would take to automate it. Would it take as much of your time to permanently automate it and have it running on its own subsequently? If automation will increase your productivity, don’t hesitate.
- Is the task expensive?
If the cost of the automation tool exceeds the cost of manual labour, then it would make little sense. But you’ll find that automation usually saves you cost just as well as time.
- Is the task at risk of human error?
When a lot of data is involved, automation is more trustworthy. Oftentimes, even a single typo or copy-and-paste error can have costly consequences.
Find out all the repetitive tasks that your team performs for a month. Once you can answer the above four questions, you can decide what tasks to apply Zapier to. You can automatically send out video meeting links to your team, and even build connections when you’re not in the office by automatically sending out messages to update your team on the weather or find out how they are spending their weekend.
Zapier makes your SaaS automation silk-smooth, and can connect over 2,000 apps! So, what are you waiting for? Connect the tools that work the most for you, and optimize your process with Zapier.
