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Ask HN: What tools do you use to automate your business?

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Re: Ask HN: What tools do you use to automate your business?

#81

Post by graeme »

k1ns wrote: post #24

I built a website test automation platform [0] that started out as an automation challenge for my other side projects. It has proven itself useful to others so I figured I'd turn it into my next adventure as its own business. Automation is something that I believe to be a must-have for many areas of business. ETL work, data entry, data collection, testing, etc., can (mostly) be automated as they're all very replicabl…

Two points of feedback:

1. From your description, I hadn't realized what this does. I run a website for my business, so I may be in the market for this. On my first read though, I skimmed and thought "very technical dev programming tool". On the second read I saw it was relevant. 2. Lack of pricing implies the price is extremely high. If the price is not extremely high, then you should add a pricing page somewhere. Doesn't have to be front page (some people will just sign up for the free trial), but adding it somewhere would probably increase free trial signups.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you use to automate your business?

#83

Post by bensonn »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #71
antonkm wrote: post #16

I often think three times before I decide to automate anything. As a dev, and co-founding with another dev, the direct response is always that it should be automated. On second thought, our billable hours are almost always better spent doing client work. This is a very relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1319/ My main work (non-dev) tools are Asana and Gmail. Asana is standalone for us (looking into adding it's Timeline…

I use Zoho Desk for tracking support tickets. It’s free up to I think 25 users. I deal with the emailed to me case by opening a ticket and copy/pasting the email into it.

I second Zoho, Zoho everything. I run a 1 person company and love Zoho. I think their mail is far superior to gmail, their office apps are superior to gsuite, invoicing is great too. I don't use Desk or many of their other apps, but they have them, and are integrated with each other. In a way integration is better than automation. Because it is integrated in one platform it is available to all applications. I don't know if that counts as less automation or more automation but I know it means less time spent on it for me. I have no affiliation with Zoho beyond being a happy customer.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you use to automate your business?

#84

Post by chezmo »

mackmcconnell wrote: post #50

I've been a loyal user of Mailparser for years. They provide an email address where you can send any email (tracking, invoice, etc..) and it extracts data based on pre-defined rules. Then, you use Zapier to do almost anything with that data: send it to a google sheet, use that info to trigger an email to your customer, etc... The possibilities are endless. My favorite use case was to use it for tracking emails sent o…

Great to hear that you like Mailparser and that you are using it since a couple of years already! I'm the founder of Mailparser and reading your comment made my day! :-)

I thought I should mention that we also launched a sister-product called https://docparser.com two years. Docparser is basically like Mailparser, but for documents (PDFs or scanned documents).

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you use to automate your business?

#85

Post by graeme »

petercooper wrote: post #21

Other than Zapier, Slack reminders are a huge help to us. We have reminders set up for all sorts of things, both recurring and adhoc. If you use Slack and don't use reminders, look into how it works, they are fantastic. We also use https://sweep.cards/ which is from Amy Hoy, who many of you may know of. It's basically for things that don't go in a calendar but which are recurring in some fashion, such as doing payrol…

Does Sweep have an app or good mobile view for management? Looks very interesting.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you use to automate your business?

#86

Post by reubenswartz »

suyash wrote: post #48
reubenswartz wrote: post #35

1. Google Calendar. Not really "automating", but I got a big boost in productivity from assigning themes to different days, so I'm not thrashing back and forth, and I can batch up similar tasks. Of course, there are fires that screw things up, but it's generally much smoother. 2. Eliminating tasks that don't need to be done, or that I've over-engineered. I have an accountability partner, and while that has a lot to d…

Love your #1. Care to share more perhaps an example what you mean by themes for different days?

Mine actually looks similar to @erjjones. ;-)

Monday is strategy, ops & finance. (A lot of Mondays don't require that much in this area, so there's extra time for other high priority tasks.)

Tuesday is sales.

Wednesday is R&D.

Thursday is marketing.

Friday is catch-up. This is actually the most important part, I've found. I used to over(schedule) everything, so my week would look really productive on Monday morning, but come next Monday morning, most things were in a state of "not quite done". In many cases, getting 80-90% of the way there has the same result as doing nothing. It was very frustrating. (Add in having kids, with days off school, random illnesses, etc, and the chance of having your week go exactly according to plan drop close to 0.)

This lets me catch up on the "big rock" items that I'm behind on. It's not perfect, but the idea is that every week I'm moving things forward. If I get done "early", there are plenty of other important things to start on (my "upcoming list"), or maybe I just go work out or research something a bit out of the ordinary that doesn't fit in my normal schedule.

It's not a perfect plan or a perfect implementation, but it feels much better than what I did before, which was too much context switching.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you use to automate your business?

#87

Post by k1ns »

graeme wrote: post #81
k1ns wrote: post #24

I built a website test automation platform [0] that started out as an automation challenge for my other side projects. It has proven itself useful to others so I figured I'd turn it into my next adventure as its own business. Automation is something that I believe to be a must-have for many areas of business. ETL work, data entry, data collection, testing, etc., can (mostly) be automated as they're all very replicabl…

Two points of feedback: 1. From your description, I hadn't realized what this does. I run a website for my business, so I may be in the market for this. On my first read though, I skimmed and thought "very technical dev programming tool". On the second read I saw it was relevant. 2. Lack of pricing implies the price is extremely high. If the price is not extremely high, then you should add a pricing page somewhere. D…

I appreciate the feedback! Messaging has been one of my biggest challenges by far. I've unfairly hurt the project because of my lack of expertise in communicating its value. Not adding pricing to the home page was a decision I made due to the home page being much more cluttered than I like (probably due to my aforementioned inability to communicate effectively). I figured, if people are interested they'll head on over to the registration page to see the pricing. I see your point as far as adding a pricing page, I will do that for sure.

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you use to automate your business?

#88

Post by RandomBookmarks »

Web browser macros! ...to automate logins plus some daily and weekly reporting and repetitive "check something" tasks. Once set up, macros are a huge time and typing saver. Formerly I used iMacros for this, and now the open-source Kantu extension:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kantu-browser-auto...

Re: Ask HN: What tools do you use to automate your business?

#90

Post by petercooper »

graeme wrote: post #85
petercooper wrote: post #21

Other than Zapier, Slack reminders are a huge help to us. We have reminders set up for all sorts of things, both recurring and adhoc. If you use Slack and don't use reminders, look into how it works, they are fantastic. We also use https://sweep.cards/ which is from Amy Hoy, who many of you may know of. It's basically for things that don't go in a calendar but which are recurring in some fashion, such as doing payrol…

Does Sweep have an app or good mobile view for management? Looks very interesting.

I have no idea, we solely use it on desktop. I know Amy on Twitter though so have asked her in case she wants to chime in.
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