A quick intro.. and automation tools?

[Jordan Lopez]

New to the forum so thought I'd say hello

I work as an advisor in the process improvement and automation space helping businesses get control of their processes, free up their time from manual work and streamline their ways of working.

I decided to join UKBF to connect with other business owners, learn from those who are already well established and understand more about the challenges owners are facing.

So to prevent this from being just an intro post, I'd love to hear from you. Do you already use automation tools in your day-to-day? Which ones, and if you don't, why not?

Cheers.

 

[fisicx]

Not really. Most of my work is custom plugin development so not sure there is much you could automate. The processes I use have been honed over many years which means things get done with far less effort. The only things that still takes time is getting specs from the client, they are without exception rubbish at defining what they want.

 

[AmazonGeek]

I use some Excel macros for client reports.

For example, one big client wholesales products to people like Argos but they also sell them B2C on Amazon. If Argos runs a sale, my client loses the buy box on amazon due to the fair price policy. So we use a piece of software to monitor the Amazon listings and let us know when a buy box is lost. We also want to see sales information in a particular format...
- Day on Day sales for each product so we can see trends
- Same for month on month
- a small number of core products highlighted
- obsolete products that are no longer on amazon automatically highlighted
- whenever the buy box is lost, this to be flagged against the product on the day it happens
- the same for when the buy box is won back
- available inventory shown against each product each day

The problem with doing this is that it involves three different reports - one from the buy box monitoring software (AMZ Monitor), one from Amazon itself (for stock) and one from another piece of software called Scale Insights (for detailed sales data). So we have created a macro that automates the whole thing. We generate the 3 csv reports first and then the macro automatically pulls it all together for us. It is a beast and very resource-heavy (it takes about half an hour to complete) but the result is perfect.

We do a similar kind of thing for inventory management in the UK and EU. Simple sales reports are generated and then pulled into a spreadsheet showing 7, 14, 28 and 56-day sales rates against inventory (both with and without current shipments). This then generates a report for what we need to ship for each ASIN.

 

[yogibear0810]

I use some Excel macros for client reports.

For example, one big client wholesales products to people like Argos but they also sell them B2C on Amazon. If Argos runs a sale, my client loses the buy box on amazon due to the fair price policy. So we use a piece of software to monitor the Amazon listings and let us know when a buy box is lost. We also want to see sales information in a particular format...
- Day on Day sales for each product so we can see trends
- Same for month on month
- a small number of core products highlighted
- obsolete products that are no longer on amazon automatically highlighted
- whenever the buy box is lost, this to be flagged against the product on the day it happens
- the same for when the buy box is won back
- available inventory shown against each product each day

The problem with doing this is that it involves three different reports - one from the buy box monitoring software (AMZ Monitor), one from Amazon itself (for stock) and one from another piece of software called Scale Insights (for detailed sales data). So we have created a macro that automates the whole thing. We generate the 3 csv reports first and then the macro automatically pulls it all together for us. It is a beast and very resource-heavy (it takes about half an hour to complete) but the result is perfect.

We do a similar kind of thing for inventory management in the UK and EU. Simple sales reports are generated and then pulled into a spreadsheet showing 7, 14, 28 and 56-day sales rates against inventory (both with and without current shipments). This then generates a report for what we need to ship for each ASIN.

I'm not the OP but thank you for sharing @AmazonGeek I found it very interesting. I'm a software engineer, so I really appreciated the specifics.

 

[GLAbusiness]

I have to be careful about confidentiality here, so I can' go into too much detail

I have developed a number of Excel models for a client. In general they:

1. Read data from files
2. Get manual data entry
3. Send emails to ask for more information
4. Do some calculations
5. Send emails to instruct third parties to take actions
6. The user interface is controlled to limit user access to excel features and be user friendly

 

[Jordan Lopez]

I use some Excel macros for client reports.

For example, one big client wholesales products to people like Argos but they also sell them B2C on Amazon. If Argos runs a sale, my client loses the buy box on amazon due to the fair price policy. So we use a piece of software to monitor the Amazon listings and let us know when a buy box is lost. We also want to see sales information in a particular format...
- Day on Day sales for each product so we can see trends
- Same for month on month
- a small number of core products highlighted
- obsolete products that are no longer on amazon automatically highlighted
- whenever the buy box is lost, this to be flagged against the product on the day it happens
- the same for when the buy box is won back
- available inventory shown against each product each day

The problem with doing this is that it involves three different reports - one from the buy box monitoring software (AMZ Monitor), one from Amazon itself (for stock) and one from another piece of software called Scale Insights (for detailed sales data). So we have created a macro that automates the whole thing. We generate the 3 csv reports first and then the macro automatically pulls it all together for us. It is a beast and very resource-heavy (it takes about half an hour to complete) but the result is perfect.

We do a similar kind of thing for inventory management in the UK and EU. Simple sales reports are generated and then pulled into a spreadsheet showing 7, 14, 28 and 56-day sales rates against inventory (both with and without current shipments). This then generates a report for what we need to ship for each ASIN.

Love this - it takes courage to build macros as large as this! Are you finding them reliable?

 

[AmazonGeek]

Love this - it takes courage to build macros as large as this! Are you finding them reliable?

To be honest, I paid someone on Fiverr. He was absolutely brilliant and even did it over the weekend because I really wanted it for a Monday-morning meeting. It cost $100 from memory and has been flawless, even though it does take up a lot of resources when running the export.

I have also added a couple of extra bells onto it since the original work was done (minor things like formatting), which was done very quickly for next to nothing.

I have used VAs for years. My bookkeeper is from India, my PPC manager from Pakistan and I use 2 more for other client work so I am well used to outsourcing stuff.

 

[yogibear0810]

I have to be careful about confidentiality here, so I can' go into too much detail

I have developed a number of Excel models for a client. In general they:

1. Read data from files
2. Get manual data entry
3. Send emails to ask for more information
4. Do some calculations
5. Send emails to instruct third parties to take actions
6. The user interface is controlled to limit user access to excel features and be user friendly

Such a shame confidentiality is a thing in this case; I'd love to know more. Can you share the client's industry?

 

[GLAbusiness]

OK I think I can share a bit more.

The client uses operational technology (OT) as well as IT.

The models were originally written as prototype solutions.

The cost for building them into an existing IT application was well north of £250k

The client uses the Excel models

 

[Pish_Pash]

I use some Excel macros for client reports.

For example, one big client wholesales products to people like Argos but they also sell them B2C on Amazon. If Argos runs a sale, my client loses the buy box on amazon due to the fair price policy. So we use a piece of software to monitor the Amazon listings and let us know when a buy box is lost. We also want to see sales information in a particular format...
- Day on Day sales for each product so we can see trends
- Same for month on month
- a small number of core products highlighted
- obsolete products that are no longer on amazon automatically highlighted
- whenever the buy box is lost, this to be flagged against the product on the day it happens
- the same for when the buy box is won back
- available inventory shown against each product each day

The problem with doing this is that it involves three different reports - one from the buy box monitoring software (AMZ Monitor), one from Amazon itself (for stock) and one from another piece of software called Scale Insights (for detailed sales data). So we have created a macro that automates the whole thing. We generate the 3 csv reports first and then the macro automatically pulls it all together for us. It is a beast and very resource-heavy (it takes about half an hour to complete) but the result is perfect.

We do a similar kind of thing for inventory management in the UK and EU. Simple sales reports are generated and then pulled into a spreadsheet showing 7, 14, 28 and 56-day sales rates against inventory (both with and without current shipments). This then generates a report for what we need to ship for each ASIN.

My feeling is - for all you're getting the job done (well done), excel is not the right environment.

Straight off the bat you can use Amazon's Seller API to automatically pull that Amazon inventory report into an MS Access table...then I would be knocking on those third party Apps doors to ask if they have an API too. That way, pretty much everything your doing can be automated (i.e. getting the source data, populating a database & running the calculations... then emailing a report out)

Using a database is a far more elegant & efficient way of handling data such as you're doing vs spreadsheets/macros ...but granted most people are familiar with Excel, less so databases (Access)

in answer to the OPs question ...I'm not a programmer but I've evolved into one...I use MS access to run every aspect of my business (I sell on Amazon as a seller, I sell to Amazon as a vendor, sell on ebay & my own website...APIs written for all of them - I'm now heavily automated which allows me to run a business on my own)

 

[GLAbusiness]

To give an idea of size:

The largest model has 84 worksheets and 164 macros

I use 2 products from Aivosto: Project Analyzer to check the VBA and Visustin to create flowcharts (in Visio) from the VBA code. Highly recommended

 

[Ozzy]

As a business we use various code deployment and tests, which are varying in degrees of automation.
Personally, and it has nothing to do with my 'day job,' my proudest automation was using a custom GPT for my daughter's business—which may not be what we're talking about but it did massively streamline part of her business.

It reads EHCP's (Education & Health Care Plans) for children with special needs, works with curriculum guidance and delivery guidance, and builds lesson plans and 'offer' proposals for local authorities and schools.