There's many things that companies still like to do the old fashioned way. There's nothing wrong with that at all. You're always going to have customers that appreciate that good old fashioned traditional approach. But at what point does the traditional way start to cost you more money than your time is worth?

I recently worked on a project with a septic services company who was spending at least a half a day each month to getting their reminder cards prepared and sent out. These reminder cards are in the form of a postcard addressed to each previous customer that is coming due to have their septic system pumped.

There's nothing wrong with sending post cards. This is their version of the good old fashioned approach that proved to be effective for them. What wasn't working out was having to dedicate a half a day to:

• Determining the list
• Printing addresses on stickers to address the postcard
• Writing in the number of years it's been since the customer pumped their tank on the postcard
• Putting the stamp on the cards
• Then finally driving to the post office drop box to have them sent out.

It's a normal process, but can be tedious if done manually.

I was able to save this company the valuable time that they were spending on completing this tedious task so that they could use that time to pump more septic tanks, spend time with their family, or anything else they wished to do!

By creating a small program to maintain a list of their customers and recent service dates, we were able to:

• Filter specific customers based on last service date
• Validate the addresses to ensure we can reach as many customers as we can
• Then send out a post card at the click of a button

Now that seems like a more manageable task to complete each month!

I simplified their process, custom developed what needed to be developed, and designed their post card templates. Turning a several hour task into something completed in just a handful of clicks.

There's many processes that small businesses still do today that could be improved with a little investment in technology.

What process do you have that could benefit from even just a little bit of automation?

Schedule a meeting with me and we can do some brainstorming!