If you haven’t read parts one and two of this series. Here’s the TLDR. I spoke to two co-founders. They had outsourced many of their business processes to a remote team in India. 7 people in total. But this caused more problems than it solved. Here’s the automation stack that we put in place for them.
That’s why they had booked a call with me.
They wanted to look at alternatives.
We had a discovery call. Ran an audit/health check. Produced an automation opportunities report for them. It identified 5 workflows that were prime candidates for automation.
Here’s what we did.
The 5 Workflows
I’m not going into the nuts and bolts of how each one works or how we implemented them.
You run a business. All you care about is the results.
Oh, one thing to note. The 2 founders had documented everything.
There was an SOP for every process that needed to happen in their business. This is what they had trained the remote team of 7 on. And they had access to read these SOPs whenever they needed.
But things dropped off.
Errors occurred, and people didn’t do said thing.
Workflow 1: Client Follow-Up Emails
Before
The team was responsible for sending follow-up emails both for new leads and for ongoing maintenance contracts.
Reminding clients of what things need to happen and when.
A team member would send a follow-up at day 3, day 7, and day 14
This was taking around 4 hours a week. But some days, things got missed. Some leads and clients weren’t contacted at all on specific days
After
Every day, a trigger-based automation would send personalised follow-ups. Or reminders at the right interval.
Zero human intervention.
Hours a week, zero.
And nothing got missed. Even on a weekend.
Workflow 2: CRM Data Entry
Before
The customer journey for this business starts from an enquiry.
Three things started this process.
The first way was that an existing client would email the information to a specific email address. Second, someone would submit their details on the business’s website or a specific lead magnet. Third, a member of the UK-based team would email, text or call a member of the remote team
A member of this remote team would then create the contact, log the source and information. And assign it to a UK-based team member
In total, it took about 3 hours a week. But errors were common. Incomplete information, missing attachments and documents.
After
The first thing we did. And the quickest win was to stitch together the form submissions on their website and lead magnets to their CRM.
The automation recorded 100% of enquiries from these sources in the CRM straight away.
We set up an AI-driven automation that would check the inbox for new enquiries that people emailed in.
This was a little bit trickier. Errors can occur, but nothing gets missed.
We then repurposed this, so if a person received a verbal enquiry. They could also send an internal email with the details to record the information in the CRM.
Again, 0 hours/week. 100% consistent.
Workflow 3: Weekly Reporting
Before
One of the remote team members would pull data from 3 systems. Build a spreadsheet. Create a basic Word document and email this to the co-founders.
It took one person half a day every Monday.
The problem was that they had a high turnover of staff at the outsourcing company.
They had to train 3 new people on how to produce the report over 6 months.
Nightmare
After
An automation pulls all the data. Builds the report (better designed and structured). We also used AI to do some basic analysis and give insights into the data.
The report would then get emailed to the co-founders at 7 AM every Monday morning.
No more waiting for it to get done.
Takes them 10 minutes to review.
Workflow 4: Document Chasing
Before
This business relied heavily on documents. Both from clients, but also quotes, specifications, and plans from suppliers.
This meant chasing up missing documents.
The remote team was responsible for checking for outstanding documents. And then chasing up the relevant party.
As it was business critical, this got done on a daily basis by a number of the team.
The problem was inconsistency.
2 team members would think the other person was checking a certain client or supplier. So the follow-up got missed.
Also, the tone of the emails was inconsistent. Over time, they would refer to the SOPs and templates less and less. And fire off the email to rattle through their workload.
After
Depending on the situation. An automation would get triggered, driven by the status of a project.
It also included escalation logic.
So for each email that got sent. The body needed tailoring to the urgency levels. But still maintained the professional tone. Everytime
Workflow 5: New Client Onboarding
Before
The business had developed a simple but comprehensive client onboarding checklist.
Certain emails at certain stages.
Folder creation and saving the relevant documents.
It took a team member about 2-3 hours to onboard a new client.
As with the other workflows. Once a team member has completed their training. At first, they would follow the checklist. But within a month or two, cracks would appear. They wouldn’t refer to the SOP, missing things entirely.
After
We set up a trigger that once a contract is signed. This would kick off an automated sequence of events.
The automation created a new folder and subfolder structure. Existing documents uploaded to the right folders.
A welcome email, document request, and a link to be able to book an onboarding call would all get sent, too.
What It Cost and How Long It Took
A lot of the “AI Gurus” say they can do this in a week or two.
I’ll be honest. A 5 workflow project like this. I tell clients that it will take 3 months to get it going.
In the first month, we tend to focus on the 2 workflows that would solve the biggest problems. Or bring the best ROI upfront.
Month 2 would be setting up the next 2 workflows, as well as refining and reviewing the first 2.
The third month would be to get the least important workflows up and running. And to continue to refine the first 4.
Depending on the project, we would also run a warranty period.
Let’s say you find an issue, an edge case that we couldn’t uncover in the initial audit. And a workflow needed tweaking. We would cover this as part of the warranty period
We tend to charge these types of implementation projects as one-off fees. Either priced per workflow. Or bundled up, depending on how a client would like to run the implementations.
For this project. There was an ongoing maintenance that sits inside a monthly retainer. That costs a fraction of what the team was costing per month.
Sounds expensive.
But when you compare it to the cost of hiring a remote team of 7. What are the hidden costs of managing a remote team? The errors, overheads, it all adds up.
Compare that to a system that, after 3 months, runs 24/7 without you having to supervise anything.
It’s a no-brainer.
What the Founders’ Weeks Look Like Now
What does this mean for the two co-founders we worked with?
Well, as with a lot of co-founded businesses. They take on different roles and responsibilities.
The first founder starts his week by reviewing the automated summary. What does he need to fix inside the business this week? His prime responsibility is to make sure things run. Serving their clients to the highest standards.
Founder Two has taken on two new higher-value clients. That’s his responsibility, getting in new business. Not because he worked harder. But because the systems where their to support him and free up his time to build the relationships.
What This Doesn’t Replace
One principle, framework I can’t get out of my head is the 80/20 principle.
80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.
So the way I view AI and automation in my business, and for my clients. Is what the 80% that can be handed off to a system. Leaving the 20% for us humans to do.
Because it can’t replace building a relationship with a lead or client. There are judgment calls that can be made.
It can’t have the conversation that wins business.
I also believe there should be a “human in the loop”.
AI is amazing, but it can also make mistakes.
Let it write and draft the emails. But you might need to take 10 minutes out of your day, to review them incase and errors occur.
You’ve still saved yourself almost 2 hours anyway.
Conclusion
As I mentioned at the start of this article. This is part 3 of a 4-part series.
In case you missed them, here are parts one and two.
Hiring a remote team to take on a lot of the admin work for your business makes sense. I know I’ve done it in the past. Will again in the future.
But it’s not always the best solution long term.
Automation has existed for years. AI has put automation on steroids, meaning it can handle a lot more tasks now.
This article is a real-world example of what can be automated and the impact it can have on the day-to-day running of a business.
Don’t miss next week: how to find out exactly which workflows in your business are ready to be automated. And what it would cost to do it.
Want to know which of your workflows are ready to automate? Book a free 30-minute scoping call. No pitch. Just a conversation about what’s possible.
