Hey folks.

And welcome back to the small
tech podcast by Ephemere Creative.

I'm your host Raph and today we're
going to be talking about automation.

So specifically, I want to talk about.

Sort of internal process automation.

And the tools that you can use for
that, why you should, why you shouldn't.

Pros and cons.

Um, and we'll dive into some of
the specific tools that we've used.

Of course all of this in the context of
small tech building a small tech business.

And yeah, let's, uh,
let's get right into it.

So why would you want to use any
automation tools for your business?

It seems pretty obvious.

You want to reduce the time
spent on repetitive tasks.

You want to, give people more time back to
do creative work or other types of work.

Specifically in the context
of a small tech business.

I think there's a lot of work that
we do across different tools, across

databases and spreadsheets and
documents and email and I don't

know all kinds of other things.

Um, maybe your accounting tool
or your, payment processor.

And when you moved back and forth between
all of these tools, I think there is some

mental overhead, that's required for that.

This sort of context switching
between one app and another, And

it just takes time to like manually
move stuff around and computers are

really good at moving bits of data.

Around.

So why not use the computers
to do that type of work?

There's a specific example in my mind
of taking certain types of transactions

in a payment processor like Stripe.

Moving that into a CRM, making sure
that a given user is properly tagged.

Based off of that maybe moving that
information into a marketing automation

tool to automate some communications.

So that type of process where you're
just saying oh yeah, this type of

transaction came through and we want
to make sure that we have a record of

that in other tools that we're using.

To make sure that that triggers some
other workflows or that the right

people are aware of that context.

That's the type of work that
I'm talking about with, these

types of automation tools.

So that was the why, and the context
of what you might do with them.

But why might you not want to use them?

Because they're not
always, the right choice.

Sometimes it's better to have a human
do these things even if a computer

could do them more efficiently.

In my experience, there's basically
two reasons that you would want to

avoid automating this type of work.

The first is there is some overhead
to setting up the automation, even

with the most user-friendly tools.

There's some debugging
that you have to do.

There's just things that you want to
make sure that you've got down properly.

If you're going to depend
on this automation.

And the time required to make sure
that all of that is working nicely if

that effort is not worth the time
that it saves you, then don't do it.

Uh, if there's a task that takes
you five minutes, once a week.

You probably don't want to spend a whole
lot of time managing the automation

and specifically also the cost.

And yeah, maybe the dollars spent are just
not worth it on those types of tasks.

The other side of it is once you
start, depending on automations.

You are to some extent
locking in, that process.

Of course you can make changes
to the automation, but there's

a lot more friction in changing.

How different tools are connected.

Over changing just a humans.

Sort of behavior.

So if you just tell someone like, oh,
actually we're going to stop doing that.

Uh, we're going to move this
thing to this other tool instead.

Then you just tell them
that and you're good to go.

Whereas if you were depending
on these automations, Then you

have to either rebuild them or.

Re configure your tools to
make sure that they aren't,

depending on this data coming in.

Um, so I feel like that wasn't a really
great way of explaining what I mean,

but essentially, yeah, you, once you
automate things, you are putting.

A process in place.

And moving away from that in a technical
sense can often be harder than moving

away from that in a human sense.

That's basically it.

So yeah, let's talk about a couple
of the tools that we have used, and

I'm going to break these down into
sort of third-party automation tools.

And then I'm going to give
you some examples of some

internal automation tools.

Um, Which will make
more sense in a second.

Um, so the biggest name out
there, uh, that it feels like

everyone knows about is a Zapier.

So Zapier is I think the one that just
seems to have the most integrations.

So if you're looking to
integrate tool X with tool, Y.

They probably have a marketing page
that is very well SEO, optimized, uh,

that you will find when you search
for how to integrate tool X with tool.

Y.

They seem to cover a lot of the
tools that we have come across.

They make it quite easy to build
workflows to automate all kinds of stuff.

Yeah, they are very, very,
user-friendly lots of integrations.

Nice tool.

A little pricey.

Uh, I find, uh, and I've found
that our clients have found.

Uh, that it gets a pricey
faster than they would expect.

Another one that I have
tried is called pipe dream.

This one is very developer focused.

They used to have a pricing system
that I liked more than Zapier.

Now it looks a lot more similar.

Though, yeah, I think their free tier
is perhaps still a little more generous.

And it's very focused on developers.

So you build your workflows in a very
similar way that you might in Zapier.

But a lot of it is using text and code.

Even if you have sort of a visual
builder within it, you're kind of

interacting with code and you can
actually just write straight up code

quite nicely in there, which to be
fair, you can also do in Zapier.

But I feel like the pipe dream experience
is a little better optimized for, for

coding then, the Zapier code blocks.

Yeah.

So that's another interesting one,
especially if you're familiar with code.

The third I want to talk about is called
Make and it used to be called Integromat.

It costs a lot less than the previous two.

So if you are looking for something
and you are on a tighter budget, I

would definitely look at that first.

I haven't used it in a few
years, but one of the things I

remember being really interesting.

Is I think it, it fit nicely
between a pipe dream and Zapier.

In that it had sort of, that user-friendly
feel of Zapier while also giving you

some of the flexibility and tooling
that you might want as a developer.

So for those developers out there who are
listening to this, you could, for example,

integrate with arbitrary applications,
kind of using OAuth and specifying, the,

the end points that you wanted to hit.

And, uh, yeah, you could, you could build
pretty custom workflows using their tools.

They also had a really neat system to
organize your, branching workflows.

At the time Zapier did not really have a
great way of doing sort of conditionals

and moving down one branch of a tree.

It was all very linear.

Now Zapier has a bit of a
better user experience in terms

of creating branch workflows.

Integromat now Make, has a really
nice visual tree that you can, where

you can see how data flows through
the tree and you can branch out

or bring things back together.

They also have ways to
store data between tasks.

And move things around also between runs.

So if you just need to, I don't
know, half a counter to say, how

many times does this automation run?

You can do that.

You can have a number that starts at
zero and just increment it every time

it runs, stuff along those lines.

I mean, you can get a lot more
creative than a simple counter

example, but, yeah, there's a lot
of neat stuff you can do there.

So those are the third-party ones
and essentially they all allow

you to connect to your tools.

So when a Stripe transaction comes in,
move something into Pipedrive the CRM,

and maybe add a record in a spreadsheet.

And I don't know, maybe do something
else and only do it on the condition

that that Stripe transaction, uh, is, uh,
from an email ending in domain X, Y, Z.

So you can do that sort of stuff
with all of these, tools, but there's

also internal automation systems
that I think are worth exploring

and discussing in this same context.

And so a lot of project management
tools like Assana and ClickUp, I'm

sure many of the others as well, have
automations built into their systems.

And so with ClickUp, we have a
couple automations that we use.

But you might say that, if you have a
form for a ticket for a product that

you're building, that you want to move
that into a particular list and you

want to tag it a certain way based off
of something that the user submitted.

And, make sure that a particular,
team member is notified.

You can do that sort of stuff with the
automation tools built in to ClickUp.

Asana has something very similar, so.

I don't know if you change the value
of a custom field to X, then move

it to list Y that sort of thing.

But even tools as simple as Gmail, I would
consider, filtering and forwarding rules

to be automations that can save time.

So I use a, an app called a Reader.

Uh, Readwise Reader to go through
newsletters and stuff like that.

And so I have a forwarding
rule, for certain newsletters

that just sends them there.

And that saves me time.

And I think there's a lot
of neat ways you can use.

Tools within Gmail or other, just
standard work apps that you might not

think of as apps that have automations,
but oftentimes they do have simple systems

to just make your life a little easier.

And I think that is worth thinking
about in the context of automation.

So, yeah, that's basically it.

I think there's a lot of stuff
you can do to save time and be

more efficient with automations.

There are some cases where
you might not want to do that.

But there's yeah, there's a
lot of cool stuff to explore.

So, if you want to hear more about
this stuff, make sure to give us a

rating in your podcast app of choice,
like, and subscribe on YouTube

and all of that other fun stuff.

And remember, we all want to
do something good in the world.

So go out there and build something.

Good friends.

See ya.