Process Automation

Your time is worth money. Get more time.

No matter what your business is, or what group you volunteer for, there are processes. They happen every day, every week, every month, and every year. It's up to you which is worse - doing them infrequently so you forget a key step, or doing them so often you don't have to think. Either way, automating those processes will save time, effort, and reduce costly mistakes.

The Homestead Emporium Story

Peggy is a wonderful seamstress who manages to get a remarkable number of cloth products sewn in a week. The problem was the 3+ hours every week it took her to get those products advertised on IndieCart. She got so bogged down that she outsourced the listing updates. The process was still 3+ hours, and she had to have her products completed by Thursday morning for a Friday inventory.

We took on Peggy’s weekly inventory with the goal of automating the process. The 3 hour marathon soon dropped to 2 hours, then to 1 hour. We now have an inventory done in 5 minutes in the evening. This gives Peggy an extra 8 hours (or more) to create more products to sell on her IndieCart store.

Peggy started by doing the listing updates herself. She then outsourced to other people, but the time requirements did not change and she was paying someone for 3 hours of work. Now she works right until her own deadline and hands the listing job to us. Five minutes later her inventory is complete. She has created more products in the time that was saved by automating the listing uploads. The listings are more consistent and free from errors. She spends less money for outsourcing her weekly listings because it is done in a fraction of the time. She can rest assured that her inventory will be ready to go live every Friday afternoon.

How It Works For Homestead Emporium

The following is a summary of how Homestead Emporium is set up. Your situation is most likely different, but we will customize the automation process to meet your needs.

Diagram of IndieCart Automation

  • Product Creation - Peggy sews all week.
  • Photo Descriptions and Hosting - Peggy takes photos of all of her products and hosts them on SmugMug. She then puts a description on each pair of photos (she takes two photos for each item).
  • Automation - The rest is up to the listing automator and is all based on the descriptions.
    • The product type and quantity are deduced from the description.
    • Everything else (prices, shipping, stock type, descriptions, etc) is based on the product type and quantity.
    • The results are uploaded to IndieCart.
  • Profit - With everything taken care of, Peggy kicks back for a night, then gears up for the next week by filling orders and creating more product!

We Can Help You Too

Not everyone makes things to sell on IndieCart. No problem - we'll work with you to discover the pain points in your processes, and we'll help make the pain go away. Contact us and let's work out how.