We have all heard the old adage "time is money"but one thing I have noticed, especially in small business owners, is that time is money, but only if it's someone else's time. All too frequently I come across an owner/operator that, for one reason or another, ends up spending tens of hours each month on repetitive tasks that could be automated cheaply using the computer they already own. What kind of tasks you ask? well, for one, re-entering invoice data into an accounting package - this seems to be a common time-eating task. In any case, often we end up spending many hours doing something that we don't have to do,and it all boils down to one of two reasons
- "I didn't know that you could do that"
- "Yes, but that costs money"
The biggest problem with people in group 1 is not the fact that they aren't aware of the solution, it's that they never thought to look.There's only one thing worse than spending 5 hours a week on some inane task,and that is not stopping to ask why you are spending those 5 hours doing this, and wondering if there a way you could not do it. If there's one thing you take away from reading this, it should be to question the merit of any repetitive tasks you do, and work smarter, not harderin getting it done. Remember, computers are lousy at making rational decisions,but they are hundreds or thousands of times faster at doing repetitive number and value related tasks.
Group number 2 choose to spend their time on a task to save money. Sure, if you work out that you are spending 5 hours a week (say 260 hours per year) instead of buying a $300 package you're effectively valuing your time at around a dollar an hour, but $300 is still $300, especially in the current economic climate. So, you need to figure out how this automation is going to affect your bottom line. If you spent $300 on some sort of software, that software then needs to enable you to generate more than $300 of profit as a result. So, if your time commitment for the task in question went from 260 hours per year down to maybe 50 hours, can you make more than $300 with those 200+ hours you end up with? I can't speak for everybody, but I would suggest that if you couldn't, there might be something wrong and you need to take a long hard look at what you're doing.
The impression from all this is that it would be pretty hard to lose out when spending $300 on a package to automate your repetitive task,but what happens if you can't find a package that does what you need? You need to ask someone, preferably someone who faces the same challenges (but not thesame industry since they aren't going to share their secrets and you don't want to give them ideas). Join a local business hub or discussion group, and ask around, chances are someone has the same problem right now or has already solved it. You might find that there really hasn't been anything made to do what you want, and you will need a budget of at least ten grand to even start considering getting something straight forward built,but if you find twenty others in the same situation that could share a solution then it suddenly becomes more manageable, or you might even be able to convince a software developer to commercialize your idea and split the costs, ownership and profits - the worst that can happen is they say no. Remember, the only sure-fire way to fail is to not even try.