Process Automation: The Complete Guide for Entrepreneurs (2024)

Process automation is now.

I still remember the moment I realized I was doing business all wrong. It was 2:00 AM, and I was manually entering data from one spreadsheet into another, drinking my fourth Nespresso. Our business was growing, but I was drowning in repetitive tasks. That’s when it hit me – I was working in the business instead of growing it. 

Fast forward almost two years later, and the team has automated 73% of our administrative tasks. The best part? Revenue has grown exponentially, while I actually work fewer hours. Let me share exactly how we did it, and how you can transform your business through automation.

Getting Started with Process Automation: A Reality Check

Listen, I know what you’re thinking – “automation sounds great, but my business is different.” That’s exactly what I thought! But here’s the truth: every business, from our vendor’s last-mile delivery company to my friend’s manufacturing firm, has processes that can be automated. The trick is knowing where to start.

Let me share my biggest automation mistake (so you don’t have to make it). We tried to automate everything at once. Big mistake. Huge! We wasted $8,000 on software that needed to be reworked because we bit off more than we could chew. 

Now I know better, and I’m going to show you the smarter way to approach this.

First things first – you need to do what I call a “Process Audit.” Grab a notebook (or your favorite note-taking app) and spend one full week tracking everything you do. I mean everything! Here’s what you’re looking for:

• Tasks you repeat daily or weekly
• Processes that often have errors
• Things you dread doing because they’re tedious (my favorite)
• Tasks that delay other work

During my audit, I discovered something shocking – I was spending 12 hours a week just on client onboarding tasks. Twelve hours! Now our automated system handles 90% of that process, and it never “forgets” to send welcome emails at 2 AM.

Here’s a practical framework I developed for identifying automation opportunities:

1. Frequency: How often do you do this task?
2. Time: How long does it take?
3. Error rate: How often do mistakes happen?
4. Impact: What’s the business cost of delays or errors?
5. Complexity: Is it a straightforward process or does it require complex decision-making?

Smart Strategy: Start with processes that score high on frequency and low on complexity. These are your “quick wins” that build momentum and confidence.

You know what’s funny? The tasks that drive us crazy often turn out to be the easiest to automate. Take email follow-ups, for instance. I used to spend hours every week checking if clients had opened proposals and sending follow-up emails. Now our automation system tracks proposal views and sends perfectly timed follow-ups automatically. Last month, this simple automation helped us close three deals we might have otherwise lost track of because we were “too busy.”

Smart strategy: look at your customer support and see where it fits on this graph.

You know your business best though!

Here’s something nobody talks about enough: automation isn’t just about saving time. It’s about reducing mental load. When we automated our invoice claims process, it wasn’t just about the 15 hours saved per month. It was about not having that constant nagging thought: “Did I remember to follow up on our accounts receivable?”

Revenue and cashflow cycles are the oxygen of any business. It’s best if this is automated. Period.

Let’s get specific about what you should automate first.

Process Automation “low-hanging fruit” that typically offer the biggest returns:

• Email responses and follow-ups
• Meeting scheduling
• Data entry and transfer between systems
• Basic customer service requests
• Invoice generation and payment reminders
• Social media posting and engagement
• Document generation and filing

But here’s my biggest piece of advice: don’t automate anything until you’ve documented how you do it manually. I learned this the hard way after automating a broken process and just making mistakes happen faster!

Take time to streamline the manual process first, then automate. 

You’ll improve your revenue cycle time and be able to scale your business faster!

Remember, business process automation isn’t about replacing humans – it’s about empowering them. When we automated our customer support call routing, our response time dropped from 6 hours to 35 minutes. Our support team wasn’t working faster; they were working smarter.

This is just the beginning of your automation journey, but starting with these basics will put you years ahead of where I was during those late-night spreadsheet sessions.

Trust me, your future self will thank you!

My name is Andrew Barrier and I started this blog for entrepreneurs as a side project while building a 9 – figure healthcare startup. My journey has been all about transforming the way businesses operate by integrating digital tools, automation, and AI—necessary elements for any company aiming to stay competitive now and into the future.

This blog is where I share what I’ve learned along the way. The good and the bad.

My philosophy is taking action, no matter what. I have an Executive MBA from University of California, Irvine with a concentration in Health Care management and Digital Transformation.

I hope this blog encourages you to become more curious about business and how the world is connected.