Save time and money by automating
At times when staffing and funding is at a premium, it may be worthwhile thinking about the activities you do regularly and asking yourself how they could be automated. Over the last two years I have worked with staff at Western University’s Human Environments Analysis Laboratory to automate some of their more tedious and repetitive tasks, which included sending email reminders about mandatory training to staff members, submitting work hours, or processing data into easy-to-understand spreadsheets and reports. Automation has so many applications and has the potential to save you time and money!
What is automation?
Automation may seem like a big scary word that involves a lot of technology and money, but the reality is that automation simply refers to the “use of technology to perform tasks where human input is minimized” (IBM, 2023). The two types of automation that are most relevant to the non-profit industry include basic automation and process automation.
Basic automation refers to taking simple and repetitive tasks and having them be completed automatically over and over again with minimal human input.
Process automation refers to taking complex and repeatable, multiple-step processes and creating a system that integrates them into single tool that will run the process over and over again with minimal human input.
The whole purpose of automation helps to increase efficiencies in your work, eliminate errors, and free up your time to do more meaningful work. Automation tools can be developed using out-of-the-box software, like Power Automate or Power BI, or through custom designed tools using programming languages, such as Python.
How can automation help your organization?
The automation process is far reaching, and the options are really only bounded by your imagination. The impact automation can have on your organization is immense and long lasting. Here are three ways that automation can help your organization: (1) Improving work quality & minimizing errors; (2) Increasing efficiencies in your staff; and (3) Freeing up time to do more meaningful work.
1) Improving Work Quality by Minimizing Errors. Automating a task or process provides an opportunity to minimize the number of errors and issues within the work product.
2) Increasing Efficiencies in your Staff. There are times when staff are working on repetitive tasks that take a long time to complete. They are not the main focus of someone’s job, so they sometimes do not get completed on time or cause other projects to fall behind. Automating these types of tasks allows staff to be more efficient, ensuring deadlines get met, while providing the same value to clients.
3) Free up your Time to do More Meaningful Work. So often the limited employees at a non-profit organization means that highly trained employees are responsible for doing repetitive administrative tasks because there is little administrative support. Automation will allow you to spend a fraction of time doing these activities, freeing you up to spend your time running the organization, providing support to your staff, and doing far more meaningful work for both your organization and your clients.
All of this is great, but you still might be wondering how automation will save you money. Well, as the saying goes, time IS MONEY! Let’s say you are an Executive Director who makes $40 / hour. If you do a repetitive administrative task 10 hours per month, that is actually costing your organization $4,800 / year. Instead, such tasks would cost $2,000 to automate and then only 2 hours per month of your time, meaning the automation would save your organization $1,840 the first year and $3,840 every year after.
Examples of Automation
Example 1:
Description. A staff member is responsible for taking emails containing the work hours of staff, summarizing the number of hours worked during the pay period, and submitting for payroll. Unfortunately, you are a small organization and don’t have a payroll system, so everything is done manually and takes about 5 hours each week to compile. Sometimes hours are submitted late and payroll is not processed on time.
Solution. Automation would provide an online form for employees to complete each week to submit their work hours. Each pay period the automation software would calculate the total hours for the pay period, calculate the deductions, and provide a list of the total hours submitted for each employee. At the end of each tax year, the automation process would provide a summary that could be used for each employee to be entered into a T4.
Pricing. This type of automation process would take approximately 30 hours to complete by integrating Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft SharePoint Lists through Power Automate. Cost for this type of project would be $2,250 + HST with a 25% discount offered for non-profit organizations. This would include technical support for the life of the project.
Example 2:
Description. An organization has a paper-based registration form for new volunteers. The volunteer fills out the form and staff are required to enter the information into a volunteer database. A schedule is created and emailed to the participants, but all of a sudden, the email bounces because a typo was made when entering the email address.
Solution.Automation would allow us to create an online form that could be completed via a computer or smart phone. Upon completing the form, an email would be sent to the participants asking them to confirm their data, and once they confirmed, the information would be added to a database where all volunteers are listed.
Pricing. This type of automation process would take approximately 15 hours to complete by integrating Microsoft Forms, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft SharePoint Lists through Power Automate. Cost for this type of project would be $1,125 + HST with a 25% discount offered for non-profit organizations. This would include technical support for the life of the project.
Example 3:
Description. An organization has an ongoing survey that goes out to their program participants to help understand the outputs and outcomes related to a project. Every quarter a staff member is responsible for creating a report that summarizes the data and describe the results.
Solution. Automation would create a custom Python tool that would take the results from an online survey created in Microsoft Forms, clean the results and format it in a way that could be properly analyzed. The individual data would be stored in Microsoft SharePoint List. At the end of each quarter (or as needed by the analyst), a Python script could be run to summarize the results into a pre-set template for the analyst to include in a report.
Pricing. This type of automation process would take approximately 60 to 80 hours to complete by integrating custom Python with Microsoft 365 API with Microsoft Forms and Microsoft SharePoint Lists. Cost for this type of project would be $4,500 to $6,000 + HST with a 25% discount offered for non-profit organizations. Additional pieces of such as a large project could also include the creation of a research plan, which would include creating recruitment tools, data collection tools, and data storage systems.
Contact Us
I hope this has provided you some ideas on how automation can help support your organization and / or business. If you need help with understanding how automation may help your organization, please contact Healthy Way Consulting at andrew@healthywayconsulting.ca. We are here to help organizations like yours! We look forward to finding ways to work with you to continue improving our community.
Author: Andrew Clark
Date: April 21, 2023