AUTOMATION IN BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY OR THREAT

your product or service and advertising to attract new leads, feedback and schedule can be, it can just as easily damage your business if it isn’t implemented in the right way.

Over half a million new invoicing, paying suppliers and Automating your marketing businesses were incorporated chasing late payments. and sales, for example, will in the UK last year, and less only work if you understand than half of those will survive Then, of course, you need who your target audience is, more than five years. But systems and processes in place what they want and how to their failure won’t be down for delivering your product or communicate with them. There to recessions or global service and ensuring customer is no point spending thousands pandemics – this figure is satisfaction. on Google ads if you haven’t based on statistics recorded established what your target way before COVID-19 came And the best way to ensure audience would be searching along. that your business operates for, or if they’re even searching successfully is to make sure you at all. And if they aren’t The reason many of these have the right team in place, responding to your ads, you’re businesses fail is because they whether you hire employees just throwing money away. are missing one fundamental or outsource to freelancers or thing – a plan. external companies. Another problem with Regardless of industry or So your business plan must personalisation. Most people sector, a business is more include strategies for sales, can spot an automated sales likely to succeed with a plan. marketing, finance, systems and email or connection request a After all, if you understand the processes, and your team. mile off. And while some people destination, it’s easier to work understand this is an attempt out how to get there. And the good news is technology to make your business more provides many opportunities that efficient, others view it as lazy The first part of your plan support and enhance all these marketing and will be instantly needs to include a strategy for areas. You can automate just put off. sales. Sales is the core of any about anything from marketing business – it doesn’t matter and sales to invoicing and And automation doesn’t take how great your product or order processing. You can even service is if you can’t sell it. So automate a factory production you need to know who will buy line. why they would buy it – what In effect, you could automate problem does it solve? your entire business. Paid Once you understand who automated sales funnels to turn your customers are and their them into paying customers, motivations for buying, it’s automatic invoicing and payment much easier to put an effective processing on sign up, and marketing strategy in place – automatic order dispatch on another part of your business payment. Plus, you can automate plan. surveys to get customer automation is the lack of Your marketing and sales marketing communications that strategies must also align with encourage repeat business. your financial strategy. You But if you want to automate your need to have a handle on your business successfully, you need pipeline so you can control effective systems and processes, your projected cashflow. You to begin with. Because as also need to be on top of advantageous as technology

into consideration individual circumstances. It doesn’t use its judgement to make decisions.

For example, you can set your invoicing system to automatically send emails chasing late payments, and even to charge late payment fees. But what if a long-standing client misses one payment? What if you don’t reconcile a payment so the system thinks you have a debtor?

You know this is unusual for them, they’ve always paid on time in the past, and you are confident there is a valid reason. But your automated system won’t take this into account. It won’t give them a call to find out what the issue is and resolve it in a friendly manner. Your automated system will send a generic email, threatening late payment charges, and that could damage a good relationship.

So even if you do have automated systems in place, you need that human input too. Because no matter how good or intuitive the tech you use is, it will only be as good as the people behind it.

And that’s why you need a plan.

Don’t just rush into investing in the latest AI product, fancy app or data science tool without

understanding how it can be applied to your business to support your objectives. If it doesn’t serve your purpose, then maybe you don’t need it. Just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you should.

Instead, make a plan – have strategies for your sales, marketing, finance, processes and team. Then you can decide how to use technology and automation to support your strategies.

Embrace technology and all that is offers you but tread carefully so that the opportunity doesn’t become a threat.

And if you do that, you’ll be less likely to be in the 50% plus of new businesses that are going to fail in the next few years

Gary King – Helping business owners to have the freedom to choose where, when and how they work. After 25 years in high-growth businesses delivering results at a senior level, Gary knew he could use his skills to help SMEs. A straighttalking, no-nonsense Yorkshireman, he now helps ambitious business owners create the freedom to make choices about their life through a range of online and in-person programmes.

Having turned around his business and his lifestyle when struggling in the first few years, Gary now runs three successful businesses and it’s his experience he uses to help other entrepreneurs ditch the guilt, start earning what they are worth, and have the ability to make choices about how they spend their time. He creates what many hard-working business owners are missing – the freedom to choose.

Gary is also Northern Regional Head for the Association of Business Mentors and sits on the Executive Team.

OCTOBER 2020

FROM ENTREPRENEUR

TO FRANCHISOR

Rune sovndahl started encounter. Rune’s case fantastic services was no different: “the in 2009 with his lesson i learnt the hard co-founder anton way was that we had skarlatov. In the beginning, to invest a lot of time the company had just a to teach people to be couple of cleaning teams, leaders. We can see that but he shares that “the work it is changing now, but environment was chaotic, back in 2009, it was really to put it mildly”. A couple hard to find someone of years later, the company who could set their own invested heavily in making goals and chase them. technology for automation Investing in people is one of which brought structure to the main goals of fantastic the turbulent workdays. services.” He also added that

The way they do business critical to success: “fantastic today is much smarter and services taught me to not leaner. They use а custom- just make relationships but built crm system, apps and take care of them. Leading all their customers can book a business is about leading more than 100 services, people. We fail, succeed and such as cleaning, gardening, grow together.” pest control and handyman as much as we did to create a powerful and profitable building strong relationships is in less than 30 seconds. Another particularly important thing he learnt is that

“We had to fail a lot. We automation is vital. He invested had to fail to succeed” says millions in a custom-built

Rune automation booking system

With a global network of making the whole process of more than 530 franchisees, booking services, managing the company’s co-founder schedules, and communicating explains: “our franchise with customers smooth and partners don’t have to fail seamless. and two award-winning apps, business. They don’t have to Rune’s company revolutionised go through the bumpy road the way people book services, because we built them a and we made a significant perfectly automated super impact on the whole propertypath to success.” maintenance industry. Automation is something

Going down the franchise everyone is seeking these days route and fantastic services have started investing in technology

When you build a brand and automation years ago. from scratch, there are “Our values and our technology countless challenges that is what attracts most of our entrepreneurs are apt to franchisees,” claims rune.

“We chose to go down the franchise route because we had everything needed to turn fantastic services into the global multi-service franchising company that is today. Firstly, we had a scalable business model, able to be represented in almost any locations. Secondly, we had the demand for our services and thirdly, our

business model was proven as profitable,” he adds. The final part, which made franchising so attractive, we the ownership the franchisees take in providing a good service.

Challenge after challenge

In the property-maintenance industry, just like in any other, there are peaks and valleys. The economic turmoil, caused by the coronavirus outbreak, hit almost every business, more or less.

“ The first month of covid-19, we lost nearly 50% of our domestic cleaning bookings. We launched fantastic services during the 2009’s recession and we knew that we had to act quickly and adapt to the “new normal. Instead of stepping back, we developed new services and we launched fantasticacademy.Com - a platform where we share all the knowledge and expertise we’ve gained over the past decade and those turn out to be a great success. While our competitors were closing down, we were providing antiviral sanitisation services to thousands of clients and growing our franchise network by signing more than 10 area development contracts,” shared rune sovndahl.

“Look, running a business is not a simple task,” says rune. “I believe that our ability to pivot quickly as roadblocks come around has played a significant role through the journey to where i’m today.” The advice that he wants to give to all young entrepreneurs is to “always think big”: “when i say big, i don’t mean to start a business just for the novelty of running a big, successful company. I mean that you have to put yourself out there, to think about the end goal when making decisions in the very first minute, and every minute afterwards.”

As a franchisor, he often self-examines himself: “i regularly do introspection on the company’s culture, asking myself questions like: ‘does our culture promote enough innovation?’, ‘Do we inspire and motivate our franchise partners?’, ‘How can we make their workday even more organised?’ I think every person has to sometimes sit down and think not about the usual daily tasks but the things, ensuring that the brand remains reputable and stable during fast-expanding cycles.”

About Rune Sovndahl:

Rune Sovndahl is a Danish-born entrepreneur, who founded Fantastic Services with Anton Skarlatov in 2009. His background in marketing and telecommunications has enabled him to build a property maintenance business spanning three continents in just 11 years. His technologydriven, people-first approach has built the first domestic services company that has an online booking form and real-time availability. Business Digest 28