The Value of Tools that Work Together

Are you feeling like there are just too many tasks to do in one day? Do you feel like the moment you cross an item off your to-dos, there are seven more tasks added to the list?

As a small business owner and entrepreneur, you have precious little time to spare between managing your staff, providing great customer service to your current client base, and growing your business… Not to mention family time, squeezing in a social life, and a rare, little thing called R&R.

But what many small business owners don’t realize is that you have the power to add efficiency to your day and it’s waiting right at your fingertips. It’s a simple secret we’ll share with you in this blog. Better efficiency = more time; you’ll be able get back your time by fully harnessing your business tools and the way they integrate with one another.

What Does Integration and Automation Mean?

We’re so glad you asked! 😉

The value of tools that work together is paramount for your success. When you have tools that integrate with one another, you can automate tasks that are unnecessarily eating up your time. By learning about automation, you can truly transform your business administration.

Every day we meet business owners who don’t realize that the tools they’re already using can work together. For example, did you know that Harvest integrates easily with Teamwork and Asana, or that Zapier can save you so much time and it just takes a few clicks? Now is the time to dig into the tools you already have and make sure they’re working to their fullest extent for your business.

Start Simple

Rome wasn’t built in a day and your integration and automation processes will also take some time to set up. But you can start with simple tasks to get you on the path toward taking back some of your time.

Look at the tasks that take you the most time or that you have to do repeatedly and put some thought into how you can speed up the process or remove it from your plate altogether. Zapier is a life-saver for high-end online business managers (like our team here at Any Old Task) and we always recommend it to clients. Zapier takes tedious tasks and completes them for you. For example:

You can set up a Zapier process to save an attachment from your Gmail account to your Google Drive automatically.

Or:

You can create a new contact in Hubspot anytime you get a new Facebook Ad lead.

The possibilities are endless, but the important thing is knowing that those possibilities exist in the first place.

If price is a factor, IFTTT (if this, then that) is a free tool that will do in a pinch. It’s like a smaller, younger version of Zapier. Bonus: it will help you out with personal and household tasks too.

Taking the time to set up automation processes might require a little more time upfront, but you’ll be saving more time each and every day as you let programs like Zapier and IFTTT do the work for you.

Integration is Key

When you start to fully harness the power of the tools you’re already using for your business, you’ll be miles ahead of where you started. Look at the tools you use and find ways that the programs can do more of the work for you.

You can integrate your Teachable account directly to ConvertKit to automatically add new students to your list and send out a personalized welcome email.

Putting it into Action

Tools that can not only automate your tasks, but also integrate with one another are crucial to the success of your business and can drastically affect your bottom line.

By saving time on your most time-consuming or repetitive tasks you’ll save money and open up more opportunity to make money! The best part is that many of these integrations and automations involve absolutely no coding on your part. Just a few clicks of your mouse and your business can start humming away on auto-pilot.

If you need help integrating your business tools, contact us today. Our team has years of experience helping entrepreneurs grow their business and we’d be happy to help you as well!