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Automating your business processes as a maker

Automating business processes means the work that goes the same way every time — quote, confirmation, contract, invoice, reminder — is done by a system instead of by you. In live music and events you start with the date request, because everything else hangs off it. You keep the conversations and the decisions. The chasing around them no longer has to sit with you.

What does automating business processes actually mean?

A process is simply the fixed order in which something happens at your end. Request comes in, price goes out, hold the date, confirm, contract, tech list, invoice, thank you.

Automating means writing that order down once and never having to run after it yourself again. The steps keep moving; you only say yes or no where it really matters.

So this isn't about big software. It's about the things you now keep in your head or dig back out of your chat history.

Which processes should a maker automate first?

Start with the request. Someone mails or calls about a date, and from that moment the back and forth begins: price, option, confirmation, contract, details for the venue.

Then the follow-up. Invoice out, a reminder when nobody paid, a message after the show. That work is always the same and always the first thing to slip.

And the admin around it: who holds which date, which option is about to expire, which tech list is still missing. That belongs in one place, not five.

How do you start without changing the way you work?

Take one thing. Usually that's the request, because the rest starts there.

Write down how it goes now, in your words and your order. Not how a handbook says it should go — how you do it.

Let that one piece run alongside your normal work for a few weeks. If it holds up, the next piece attaches by itself. That way you never have to trust everything at once.

What is better left alone?

The conversation. A booker unsure about a date, a venue asking whether you can play something else, an organiser who has gone quiet a bit too long — you want to be there yourself.

And the price. A system may do the maths; you decide what you ask.

What's left is the typing around it. That's exactly the part eating your evenings.

How do I take this on for you?

I'm not a package you have to set up yourself. I work as a colleague: I look at how things run at your end and take pieces off your hands.

I send the standard mail, prepare the confirmation, track which option expires and which invoice is still open. Anything going out, I show you first until you say it's right.

Nothing to install, nothing to learn. You tell me how you work, and I do the rest of that round.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to be technical to start?

No. You describe in plain words how your work runs; setting it up is my part.

My way of working isn't standard. Does this still fit?

In this world that's the rule rather than the exception. I follow your order, not the other way round.

Will mails go out that I haven't seen?

Only if you switch that on yourself. By default I show you everything first.

Mail me at info@mia-automation.com to tell me which round keeps slipping at your end, and I'll show you what I can take over.