Choosing The Right Project

Starting Small

There are plenty of tasks that you, or maybe even your entire organization do everyday, that are necessary. But being necessary doesn't represent an incapability for improvement. Even tasks that only take 5 minutes a day can add up to immense long-term savings, if simplified down to a button click or two. One 5 minute task done by the average office employee (making $12 - $18 an hour) would cost around $1.81 a year. Ok, doesn't sound like much, but remember, there are 96 5-minute increments in a given work Day. And most office tasks performed by you or your office staff are going to take more time than that.

So don't feel like you have to go for the biggest time savings first. Sometimes a snowball approach is best. You can get a better ROI on smaller developments if they're targeted towards the tasks done most often in your work.

But if you're not seeing any opportunities for improvement, and feel like everything is as simple as your setup will allow, then ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do you have to get information from multiple sources and combine data?

   1. For example, do you go into your accounting system, and pull a report, then go to another sheet, system, etc. to pull more info?

2. Are you having to reformat information consistently (like adding colors, headers, sorting, PivotTables, etc) by hand?

3. Do you have to refresh formulas and calculations?

   1. Do some of those calculations freeze your computer?

4. Are you manually taking information from one system, just to manually put it into another?

If you're currently doing any of these consistently, then you're a prime candidate for automation. Many a time, we see that people just do not know what's available to them that could completely transform their business and allow them to focus on profitable, productive work.

Going Big

One of my first major automation projects was my most impactful. I was working for a medium-size automotive company. We had an open invoices report that contained thousands of rows of data for 8 different departments, and reported that information in a consolidated workbook on a monthly basis. This process was costing a full-time employee 8 - 10 hours a month to complete manually (that's over $150 a month expense just for this report). Now automating this report was quite the project for my skill level 8 years ago, but by the time the automation was fully developed, I had cut the 8-10 hour job to a button click and 5 seconds of patience while the process runs and saves on a shared network folder. And I started LampPost to help other businesses realize the same kinds of savings.

Or maybe the above event doesn't apply to you. Like most companies, maybe you have a system with certain out-of-the-box capabilities. It works great for 80 - 95% of your business, but that leaves plenty of room for time waste. And you thought of customizing or buying premium upgrades, but realize that extra cost outweighs the value it adds. Another issue is that there is just no system that you have found that does what you need. Whether it's storing and evaluating diagnostic information, quality information from your suppliers and customers, or anything else--there's just no market for you to find what you're looking for. Even worse, you try to speak with developers, who want to direct you to robust, full-scale systems or web-based applications that would cost more to implement than they would save you time or money.

Maybe you'd like to:

1. Track order flow throughout multiple departments

2. Get certain information, but have absolutely no idea how you could feasibly gather it.

3. Standardize costing models, and estimates

4. Do away with paper-based approval systems

5. Standardize your item number logic and inventory setup

6. Build Aged Inventory reports

7. Keep up with performance metrics and chart them automatically

8. Or just do something in your company for which a better solution doesn't seem to exist yet

There is always a better way, and while there is no way to completely avoid the cost of designing a custom application, there are ways to significantly mitigate the cost without compromising security and effectiveness. And successfully doing so can be a game-changer for your business. That's why we at LampPost like to start with Microsoft Office products as a starting point for process improvements and design. It's a fantastic way to simplify the complex, without adding unnecessary expenses. Some of these platforms have been around for 30 years, consistently improving on themselves--and we've spent over ten years in the field perfecting our abilities within these platforms, allowing us to help bring the dreams for your company to life. But if your solution needs something more, we can help with that, too.

The possibilities are endless in how we can help you improve your processes. Ultimately, finding the right project is the product of reviewing where you see the most time being wasted in your company. There's no better time than the present to start. Reach out to us today to see how we can help. Thanks for reading.