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Case Study

Small Business Automation Case Study
BB
Bob Bass

Capital Consulting

Call centers buy cheap computers in bulk. Accounts Receivable Management (ARM) software is highly specialized and it needs to work on 'Windows XP' era computers. Innovation has been slow because it is rooted in some very difficult and high risk areas. Payment Processing, Inventory Management, and Reporting.
"We always hit a ceiling at a certain size. As the owner, I couldn't focus on growth. For every employee I hired, I had another several hours per week in administrative and management work."

Areas of Focus and Challenges:

Database Administration - Meticulous records must be kept at all times for hundreds of thousands of records. Every interaction must be tracked.
Inventory Management Platform - Records are transferred between parties regularly and have a direct impact on financial and legal matters.
Specialized CRM - The information that the agents need don't match the structure of traditional CRMs, and the specialized CRMs created for this purpose don't integrate with modern services.
Reporting - Reporting takes place daily, weekly, semi-monthly and monthly. No standardized formatting is used. The same report needs to be generated multiple times with different layouts.
VoIP & Call Recording - When compliance is involved, call recording and consent for recording can't be overlooked.
Email Campaigns - Custom emails need to reach every consumer at several points in the process.

The first step was to take inventory of the current systems in place

When evaluating the workflows of the agency, it became clear that their struggle to grow was the result of the owner doing administrative tasks which could be automated with different software.
Service Type
Original Solution
Old Annual Cost
1
Database Administration
MariaDB
$0.00
2
Server Hosting
Azure Windows VM
$1,800.00
3
Inventory Management
CollectionsMax Administrator
$0.00
4
CRM
CollectionsMax Professional
$180.00
5
Reporting
CollectionsMax Administrator
$0.00
6
VoIP - (1 Line)
FreePBX (White-label)
$600.00
7
Email - (1 User)
GSuite
$144.00
8
Website
Wix
$300.00
There are no rows in this table
$3,024.00
Sum
⁠

We examined more modern alternatives which had automation potential

Service Type
New Solution
New Annual Cost
1
Database
MySQL
$0.00
2
Server Hosting
RouterHosting Windows VM
$360.00
3
Inventory Management
Airtable
$0.00
4
CRM
Copper CRM
$288.00
5
Reporting
Airtable
$0.00
6
VoIP - (1 Line)
DialPad
$180.00
7
Email - (1 User)
GSuite
$144.00
8
Website
VueJS & Firebase
$0.00
There are no rows in this table
$972.00
Sum
⁠

We made a plan to automate the entire 'Administrative Assistant' position as well as some of the more repetitive tasks the owner was responsible for.

Service Type
Original Solution
Old Annual Cost
New Solution
New Annual Cost
1
Administrative Work
Administrative Assistant
$33,280.00
Automation
$3,000.00
There are no rows in this table
⁠

A tangible savings of $32,332.00 annually, the intangible cost is the countless hours of and repetitive tasks


"An administrative assistant was nice, but I realized that it was a completely redundant position once we had the correct tools. I was working 70+ hours a week and taking business home with me. I woke up at 3 AM several nights a week to manually run payments. Those 70 hour weeks turned into 15 hour weeks once we started automating."

An extra $32k per year and at least 55 hours per week were saved


"We had accepted that the industry was behind the times. We weren't industry leaders, we never considered that we had an opportunity to innovate."

When support staff was out, the owner played the role of a secretary and 'big-picture' work took the back burner


"I didn't need a new debt collection platform, I needed to completely re-think the processes and goals. The world has changed over the past 20 years but the software has stayed the same."

Once new software was in place and the key integrations were handled, we tackled the 'quality of life matters'


"My job became more hands off than I thought it could be. Everything is getting done on time and human error has largely been removed from the equation."

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