Automating Your Operations Processes

Once you’ve got the money rolling in with efficient marketing and sales processes, the next important topic to explore is how to automate various business operations processes. Having efficient operations processes will certainly help you and your team to keep things ticking along in the background on autopilot, giving you more time to focus on keeping your customers happy with better customer service and targeted retention activities.

In this chapter, we will discuss some of the different types of operations processes that can be automated with Zapier, and we will provide examples of workflows used with some common operations-focused applications. First, we will give an overview of the types of operations processes that can be automated with Zapier, such as task and project management, storage and organization, communication, and data handling with spreadsheets and databases. Then, we will explore where to start with automating operations...

Technical requirements

To make the most of the content in this chapter, you will need access to a Zapier account. The Zapier Free plan will be required for you to create single-step workflows and use Zapier’s pre-built templates. The Zapier Starter plan will be required for you to use Premium apps and to create multi-step workflows.

You can get access to the Zap template used in this chapter at https://bit.ly/zapier-book. Using the template will help you visualize how the process works.

An introduction to automating your operations processes with Zapier

Once you’ve made those ever-important sales, you need to provide your customers with the product or service that their well-earned money is paying for. Of course, in order for your business to succeed and be competitive, your product or service needs to fulfill a need or solve a problem, and it should be of exceptional quality to ensure your customers come back to buy more. While you can have the best processes in place to market and sell your products and services, and have exceptional offerings with good value for money, if the processes behind production and delivery are extremely manual, repetitive, and error-prone, delivery will be poor, and the customers you worked so hard to find will run a mile. Inefficient operations processes could cause you to have significant delays in responding to customer service queries, or you might forget to respond altogether. It could also mean that you experience order processing...

Where to start with automating your operations processes with Zapier

It is always good to do some pre-work before you start automating your processes. In Chapter 2, Preparing to Automate Your Processes, and Chapter 3, Building Your First Automated Workflow (Zap), we covered a few important points that will help you when you are strategizing your operations workflows, and they are as follows:

1. Map out your operations processes: If you don’t have a clear idea of how your operations processes work with all your tools, follow the steps in the Simplifying your processes and assessing what can be automated section in Chapter 2, Preparing to Automate Your Processes, to visually map out your processes so that you have a high-level overview of how your tasks work with your existing software.
2. List your operations tools: Make a list of all the operations tools and services that you use in your business to achieve your goals. Then, assess how these tools fit within your mapped...

Automating online Word document processes with the Google Docs integration

Zapier currently integrates with 20 apps in the Google suite of tools, including Google Sheets, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Analytics, and Google Ads. Google Docs is a popular online word processor app that allows you to create and edit text documents as well as to invite and collaborate with other people. Collaborators can make changes and add comments in real time. You can also upload a Word document and convert it into a Google Docs format, view your document’s revision history, and translate the document into different languages. You can download documents in other file formats, such as Word, RTF, PDF, HTML, OpenOffice, or as a .zip file, or email documents as attachments. If you’re a die-hard fan of Microsoft Word but want a cloud-based word processor with similar features and functions with the added bonus of being able to collaborate in real time and integrate it with connector...

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed the different types of operations processes that can be automated with Zapier, and we covered some examples of workflows used with some common operations-focused applications. First, we got an overview of some of the types of operations processes that can be automated with Zapier. Then, we explored where to start with automating operations processes with Zapier. Finally, we discussed how to automate online Word document processes with Google Docs integration.

You now know how to automate your operations processes with Zapier – specifically, with the Google Docs integration.

In the next chapter, you will learn how to automate your finance and reporting workflows. We will discuss some of the different types of finance and reporting processes and give working examples of how these processes can be automated using Zapier. We will also provide practical tips on how to solve problems relating to finance and reporting workflows.

Questions

1. What type of operations processes can be automated using Zapier?
2. When using the Google Docs integration, should you use the name or ID of a file for mapping in your action steps?