Why do you need an automation agency?

If you know the first thing about automation, you probably know that there are lots of great tools out there that claim to make it really easy for you to automate even the most complicated tasks. And while it’s true that there are a lot of great tools out there, they tend to be far more complicated than they let on. That’s where we come in. And let’s be realistic. You and your team are stretched enough already that investing a bunch time to find the right automation tools isn’t going to happen.

So, beyond the fact that you don’t have time to prioritize automation on your own, there are basically four main reasons why you need a full-service automation agency. (PS: here is our recap on what we mean by “automation” so we’re all on the same page.)

“No-Code” is Nonsense

If you’ve done even the most cursory search into what’s out there in terms of automation tools, you’ll likely notice that nearly all of them claim to be “no-code.” The idea here is that you don’t need to have any technical understanding and certainly don’t need to know how to actually code in order to use their platform. Having used hundreds of different platforms at this point, I’m here to tell you that this is a myth.

While many of the platforms don’t necessarily need you to write code from scratch, they will mostly be far more powerful and simple to use if you do know how to write some code. Beyond this, in order for your automations to functions correctly, you’ll need to understand the nuances of how APIs work in general and understand the documentation for the specific platform your trying to automate (e.g., Stripe). So, while you might be able to set up some automations that hook into Stripe with no coding, do you understand the nuances of “billing cycle anchors” and '“proration behavior” in the Stripe API?

In addition, you’ll need to understand the (likely) complex data structures of your own data and those of other platforms in order to get them to work together. Picking on Stripe again, make sure you’re formatting all your dates in Unix timestamps.

You’ll Miss Automation Opportunities

If you have one point person taking on automation at your company, it’s likely that they’ll focus on the one area of the company in which they are familiar (e.g., marketing). While that’s a great place to start, you’ll also miss the opportunities in other areas where automations might have an even bigger impact. They’ll need to dig into sales, marketing, operations, finance, HR, product, engineering, and customer support just to get started.

The way our process works is that we use our extensive history running and working in multiple parts of different companies to unearth automation opportunities. And once those opportunities are uncovered, we also know the challenges and typical workflows of these teams, which means we’ll have a head start on delivering the right solutions.

Knowing What’s Possible

Since we eat, sleep, and breath this stuff, we know what’s possible with automation (and what’s not). So, while someone internal might be able to do some basic things, there are a bunch of tasks that they might find that could be automated, but they dismiss because they have no idea how it could be done. They are completely unaware of the tools out there (or custom coding) that could be used to automate more complex situations. A fun one we just discovered (as a simple example) allows you to take screenshots of any website all via an API. If you didn’t know that tool was available, you’d miss some automation opportunities.

Better, Faster, and Cheaper

Since this is all that we do, we will deliver your automations faster, at higher quality, and likely at a lower cost than doing it all internally.

Our quality will be be better because we use the leading tools in the industry and deeply understand the technologies involved, so our automations will be bulletproof and free of errors.

We will do it faster because we’ve probably done it before. In general, we like to deliver our solutions in under two weeks. Read that again…how many other service providers give you meaningful results in under a couple weeks?

And yes, we will do it overall at a lower cost. Our fees typically include an upfront build and, depending on the automation, a small ongoing maintenance and update fee. How is this cheaper if you need to send us a check versus having your team do it for “free?” Well, clearly, they don’t actually do it for free. You still need to pay them and while they’re working on this, they aren’t working on other things where they could have a bigger impact. At the same time, you don’t have to pull off your very expensive and irreplaceable engineering team to help. Every time you interrupt them with something that isn’t impacting your products, you’re wasting money. No need to bother them if we’re involved. And, as mentioned already, since we work so quickly, we can accomplish in just weeks what might take your teams months (or more) to complete.

Let’s Get Started

If you’re not sure if your company can benefit from what we do, check out our simple, five-minute assessment. We’ll ask you 8 questions and rate how much we can help you (or let you know that we can’t because you’ve got it under control).

If you’d like to get in touch to talk about how we can help, find our contact info here.

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