PREFACE

As a small business owner, you do everything you can to put your company on the
right track. You make smart hires, invest in training your team, and pick software that
you won’t outgrow in two years.

But where are you on automation?

The US Council of Economic Advisors estimates that 83% of jobs paying less than
$20 an hour could be automated in the near future. The McKinsey Global Institute
predicts that 20% of all jobs could be automated in a similar time frame.

But aside from lost jobs, how does a small business owner prepare for such an
onslaught? What kind of preparations will ensure that your business doesn’t suffer
the same fate as so many other industries disrupted by automation? Can you embrace
technology while also have a thriving workforce?

Automation is a present and increasing reality and, the sooner you can bring it into
your company’s culture and foundation, the better prepared you will be for the future.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 1

Digital is
NOT THE
Solution
T he first step in including automation
into your company is to understand
what automation is and what it isn’t.
Automation seeks to eliminate as much of
this manual transfer of data as possible.

To start, you need to understand the In an automated workflow, your sales

difference between digitized and automated. person would start with a reimbursement
form that is already half-filled in with all of
For example, a company that has gotten her details. After submitting all the details,
rid of paper reimbursement forms in favor she hits submit. From that moment, she
of fillable PDFs has digitized the form. doesn’t need to do anything but wait for
Eliminating inter-office memos in favor of the cash to be deposited into her account.
email is digitization. Turning your employee In fact, every member in the process needs
handbook into a wiki-style format is only to complete their small role (i.e.
digitizing. approval, processing) while the transfer is
handled without any human lifting.
But none of these are examples of automation.
In the book Digital Transformation with
For automation, the enemy is not paper, Business Process Automation, Keith
but the manual transfer of data. If your Swenson of Fujitsu America says,
travelling salesperson must download a “As we make everything digital, what is it
reimbursement form, punch in all the data, that we are transforming? There is little to
email it to her manager for approval, and gain from digitizing things that are already
then forward the email and form to the automated. The real benefit comes from
finance department for processing, although transforming things that are not automated;
the process has a facade of digitization, it’s things that today are human processes.”
actually a labor-intensive manual workflow.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 3

WHAT AUTOMATION
BRINGS TO YOU

1 REDUCED TIME
If you were to eliminate all the time your team currently
spends manually inserting, creating, tracking, and
transferring data, what kind of savings could you imagine?
Automation helps your company spend less time on
mundane busywork and more on things that matter.

2 REDUCED ERRORS
When you have an automated, predefined workflow for your
processes, the chance of error is greatly reduced. Systems
and machines almost never fail to accurately handle data.
If you use intelligent forms and appropriate approvals, you
can expect your processes to run with zero errors.

3 REDUCED COSTS
The alternative to an automated system is to hire someone
to handle all the data generated by a single process and
ensure its completion. It is likely that you already have
people on staff who are performing some of these manual
tasks. By freeing them up to do other things, you will have
not only reduced errors, but also saved on labor costs that
don’t net much of a return.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 4

 4 BETTER TRACKING
When a process is automated, you can see the status of
any item inside that process with a quick glance. Imagine
processing 300 sales invoices a month and wanting to know
what stage a single order is in. In a manual environment,
this means searching through files, emails, and phone calls.
In an automated system, it’s a simple click of a button.

5 DATA AND ANALYSIS

With manual processes, it is extremely difficult to
gather data on how well the process is running. You
probably have no idea how long employee onboarding,
vendor payments, or service requests take to complete
on average if you have a manual system. When you
turn to automation, you can see exactly how long the
process takes, and where the bottlenecks are that you
need to address.

Automation at Your Fingertips

This ebook provides you with a quick manual to bring automation into your
organization at the easiest level - in your routine processes. As you work
further with automation, you will see many more possibilities emerge.

To prepare your company for the future, creating a culture of automation is

essential. In order to compete in an automated age, you must continuously
seek out where your organization’s time is wasted with mundane, manual
tasks. Assign those tasks to a system and let your team work on more
important work that is critical to your business.

The next chapters will guide you on how to take the very first step towards
making automation part of your company’s culture.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 5

Chapter One

5 Signs You are Ready for

Automation

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation

applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that
automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

- Bill Gates

T he most important key to successfully introducing an automated

system to your company is choosing the right process. Pick the right
one and you can convince your whole company that automation is the key
to the future. Select the wrong one and it may be years before you can try
it again.

Automation won’t fix the messes you have in your company. It will only
improve the efficiency you already have. If you choose a broken process to
automate, you won’t see any benefits.

Here are five signs that you have a process ready for automation. Use these
to identify the best process to start out with automation.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 6

1. The Process is Standardized

One of the biggest challenges in automation is the lack

of standardization. Trying to automate an unstructured
process is like nailing jello to a rotating wall.

When you are looking for a first process, identify something

where the workflow rules are already set and there aren’t
too many exceptions to handle.

If it is hard to get a clear rule on how a process should

function, you should probably give it back to your team to
rethink, even from a manual perspective.

Processes where everyone is clear on the existing

workflow are also good candidates for initial automation.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 7

2. There’s Already an Existing Form

Having a paper or digital form for a process such Attachments? Dropdowns? Date and time
as a travel reimbursement is a great sign that fields? Most modern form builders include a
the process can be automated. It shows that wide variety of field types that will allow you to
someone has considered all the data needed to create a form that is even better than what you
complete a request. already have.

However, when you are working with an Your workflow automation software should
automated system, you can often augment your be able to give you an enhanced version of
forms in ways that paper or PDFs don’t allow. your paper form that can even auto-populate
Think about the types of fields you will need. common fields.

3. Miscommunication is Routine

This one isn’t necessarily a good sign, but one is already overflowing and she never sees
that suggests that you have a lot to gain from the email. In later meetings, there is a lot of
automation. A major hazard to any business miscommunication about what was agreed on.
process is miscommunication, as it derails the
whole process. Automation can help fix these communication
errors because it enables each request to
For instance, in your manual marketing budget sit separately on a universal dashboard.
approval process, an analyst attaches the budget Automation increases transparency and allows
plan in an email and sends it to the marketing people to communicate better through the
head. But your marketing head’s email inbox platform.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 8

4. Accountability is a Consistent Problem
As a small business owner, you rely on your This person handles assigning tasks, improving
team to take accountability not only for their the form, and checking out reports. Within an
own actions, but of entire processes and parts automated workflow, each task has a single
of the business. owner which makes it clear to everyone who a
particular item is waiting on.
When a workflow is handled manually, it’s can
be difficult to hold someone accountable for When the system itself is so easy to change and
every step. There’s always something else to edit, no one can say they lost a form or didn’t
blame: technology, spam filters, not enough get enough information.
information, etc.

If you sense a lot of accountability missing from

one of your existing processes, automation
may be a big help. Automation brings in a lot
of built-in accountability. For starters, only
one person is responsible for the smooth
functioning of the process.

5. Tracking is Nearly Impossible

To ensure that a process is running well, you click. Each vendor payment follows the same
need to be able to see the status of any request at pattern. When the finance manager checks it,
any time. In a manual process, this is extremely you can see that your COO forgot to delegate
difficult. his tasks while on vacation and an approval is
stuck with him. You quickly reassign the task
Let’s say you get an email from a vendor who and tell finance to expedite the payment.
has escalated an unpaid invoice. You send an
email to your finance head to ask what the Automation can be a great tool at any point in
issue is. The finance head has to sort through your journey, but applying it at the right time
spreadsheets, paper invoices, and her inbox makes a big difference. Identify processes that
before she’s able to let you know what the are already mature enough to be automated and
problem is. This undoubtedly encourages that have a big scope for improvement when it
blaming and defensiveness. comes to communication, accountability, and
tracking.
If you have a standardized process, but struggle
to track items inside that process, automation Read the next chapter to get a better idea of the
might be a great asset for you. In an automated common processes small businesses automate!
workflow system, all of this is done with a simple

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 9

Chapter Two

What Processes Do Small

Businesses Automate?

T here are dozens of possible processes to automate within a small

business. We analyzed the data on what SMBs are automating on the
KiSSFLOW platform and found that these were the seven most popular
applications. See if any of these sound like a good place for you to start!

Click on any of the links to see a demo of these processes on the

KiSSFLOW platform.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 10

What Processes Do Small Businesses Automate?
(Click the headings for a Video Walkthrough)

01 EMPLOYEE ONBOARDING
The employee onboarding process should be simple, comprehensive, and easily
reproducible. However, it is notoriously slow, generally misses some steps, and doesn’t
give everyone the same feel. When you automate this process, you can get rid of
repetitive form filling. Once a new employee fills in all of his details the first time, the
same information can be electronically shared with all the departments that need it.
You can also build steps into your workflow to give custom surprises and make sure that
someone’s work station is ready to go on the day they arrive. An automated onboarding
process means new employees are not only happy, but impressed with the automated
culture you’ve created.

02 VACATION REQUEST
No big shocker here. People love to take time off, but the process of actually asking for
leave can make you wish you were at the beach already. This automated process allows
the requestor, manager, and HR team to work seamlessly together without paper forms or
pesky emails.
Lots of SMBs use the Vacation Request app, and best of all, you can connect it directly
with your Google Apps account, or use it to show Leave Balances so that everyone knows
exactly how many days they have left to take.

03 PURCHASE ORDER
The purchase order is the heartbeat of most SMBs. But in a manual process, it can be
painful and tedious to get the items you need while still respecting approvals and data
needs. Especially when requests are pouring in from so many vendors, manual forms
make the life of the finance team miserable.
Automation can drastically cut down the time taken to request and approve a purchase
order. You can even create conditional tasks that only happen if an item is above a
certain dollar amount.

04 PURCHASE REQUEST
Purchase Requests are the prequels to the earlier story. Purchase requests can mean the
start of something great. Why saddle the process with unnecessary paper forms that
make it hard to get anything done?
With an automated process you can not only streamline the purchase request process,
you can also link it to a purchase order so that as soon as the PR is approved, a new PO
is created.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 11

05 TRAVEL EXPENSE APPROVAL
Submitting travel expenses is very time-consuming for everyone involved. Manual
forms and workflows make the whole process even harder, no matter if the process uses
paperclips and paper receipts or digital forms that have to be attached to emails.
In an automated process, the initiator can attach digital files and then check up on the
status as the request smoothly funnels down the workflow. Automating the travel expense
approval process improves the speed and efficiency of the process that saves time and
enables the employees to focus on productive tasks.

06 PAYMENT APPROVAL
Manual payment approvals can be quite complex, especially when the approver doesn’t
have all the information she needs every time. Everybody wants more details and
information. With an automated form, you can make sure that everyone sees exactly
what they need to while also reducing the chance for errors and accountability by
making fields read-only.
Automated payment approvals can also be conditional based on the amount, and can be
automatically directed based on the purchaser’s department.

07 SALES ORDER
Just because you love to see lots of sales orders doesn’t mean you love to spend
all day processing them. This is a customer-centric process and needs to be fast,
efficient, and errorless. Processing the sales order manually makes it prone to
mistakes and eats away at the time of your sales representatives.
Automating the sales order process results in faster order fulfillment, reduced
backlog, and more motivation to keep your sales team out on the field rather than
handling paperwork.

Anything Sound Interesting?

KiSSFLOW comes with nearly 50 pre-built apps like these that can give you a head start in
coming up with an automated solution. You may have process you want to automate from Sales,
Marketing, HR, Admin, Finance, or your basic operations.

Get creative and think about what makes the most sense for you!

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 12

Chapter Three

BUT... ?

N ow that you’ve seen how automated workflows can fit into your
company, you are probably feeling both excited and skeptical.
Sure, automation seems like a great way to put your company on the
right foundation for growth,

but what are the common objections to it?

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 13

 01 ...won’t automation be expensive ?

Some forms of automation can be expensive, but using a system to automate your core processes
is a very cheap way to experiment. KiSSFLOW plans are priced per user and start with a minimum
of only 10 licenses. That means you can probably get started with automation for less than $100/
month. And you can create an unlimited number of automated processes!

There are more expensive products out there, but many of them are needlessly complex and
bloated with a lot of features that small business owners don’t need.

There are also some open source platforms out there you can download for free. You might also use
Google Apps Script or SharePoint to create workflow connections with your existing applications.
All three of these options would require a lot of technical knowledge and someone on your team to
constantly maintain them, or you would need to hire expensive consultants to set them up.

02 ...do I really need another software platform ?

Aside from your general productivity suite, you likely have a few other core apps that you depend
on for your daily work. Why load your team down with yet another application?

The brilliant thing about an automation platform like KiSSFLOW is that it can connect all of your
systems together around the way you use them. You love the insights you get from your sales
platform, but you want a quick way to approve and document discounts for your sales team, and
also have that information documented on your accounting software. Through integrations, you
can automatically connect all of your current systems.

You already use a workflow to connect these systems, it is just a very manual one that requires
a lot of data transfer by humans. With an automated system, you can get more value from the
software you already use.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 14

0303 ...I’m not really a technical person.

Programming skills are not necessary to automate your office. In fact, the only thing that is
required is a clear understanding of how you want the process to work. KiSSFLOW is a human-
centric process automation platform. This means that you can design your form and workflow
in the way that makes the most sense to you, without needing to worry about any coding or
programming. And if you ever need help with something, our team is available to help through
instant chat.

0304 ...do I have to maintain it ?

KiSSFLOW is a cloud-based product. With on-premise solutions, the buyer is responsible for
maintenance, updates, versioning, and many other headaches. When you buy a cloud-based
solution, you not only get the convenience of being able to login from any device around the globe,
you also get the top-rated security that comes from Google and Amazon, where KiSSFLOW is
hosted. We take care of all necessary maintenance, provide regular updates and improvements, and
keep the bad guys out of your account.

0305 ...am I killing jobs by using automation ?

As we move further into an automated world, many people are worried about the potential loss of
jobs. However, as our computers become more capable, every business owner needs to seriously
think about how they plan to merge software and people. Smart owners will create a team of very
efficient software combined with very capable humans who can perform a task together. Small
businesses probably won’t ever layoff any employees as a result of automation. However, you may
need to think about those employees whose role is exclusive to manually transferring data and
assign better and more meaningful work to them that is more suited for humans.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 15

Chapter Four

How Do I Start?

W hen you are ready to implement automation into your business,

here’s a good game plan.

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 16

How Do I Start?

01 PICK YOUR PROCESS

Start with a process where you can see obvious results and where there aren’t any
immediate risks.

02 MAKE SURE THE PROCESS IS CLEARLY DEFINED

Remember that automating a bad process won’t help you at all. Meet with stakeholders
to ask them what they would like to see in an automated process. What benefits are they
looking for? Do you need to be able to connect with other software platforms? Do you
need to be able to create conditional steps? Do you need to be able to hide some data
from certain task owners? At this point, you don’t need to use any software, just map it
out on pen and paper.

03 PICK YOUR PLATFORM

After you’ve figured out what you need, it’s time to go shopping. Many companies get
this wrong and start with the software, only to find out that it lacks key features, or
they get buyer’s remorse after spending a lot of money on something that doesn’t work
well. Know exactly what you are looking for first, and then go find workflow automation
software that fits.

04 CREATE YOUR AUTOMATED FORM AND WORKFLOW

If you choose the right software, this should be a fairly quick and easy step. You should
be able to configure all of your settings like email notifications, assigning deadlines, and
configuring accessibility.

05 GO LIVE, COLLECT DATA, AND OPTIMIZE

Once your automated process is up and running, you will likely have a few wrinkles to
iron out. After it has been functioning for a few weeks, you should have good data to let
you know how well the process is functioning. Plug in some analytics and discover the
best places to make improvements. Go back and adjust your workflow and form as needed
to make sure that everything is running at peak performance!

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 17

READY TO START?

A utomation is coming to your industry in a big way. As a

business owner, you have an obligation to make sure
you are prepared so that your company will be able to thrive
in an automatic age rather than struggle to keep up.

If you think your business is ready to try automation, turning

your manual processes into sleek workflows is the best place
to start.

Try KiSSFLOW today and see how you can lay the right
foundation for your company’s future!

Automation Essentials for Small Businesses 18