Low-Code Automation for Small Business

A customer fills in your website form at 9pm. Next morning, someone re-types it into your customer list, writes a reply and sets a reminder to follow up. Then they do it again for the next enquiry, and the one after that.

Scentia, an education services firm in Hamburg, had exactly that routine: contact-form enquiries arrived by email, and staff added each one to their CRM by hand before replying. They connected those steps with a low-code automation tool, and Make's customer story says it now takes around 10 hours a week off their workload.

Nothing about that job needed a person. It needed doing correctly, every time.

What low-code automation is

Low-code automation tools connect the apps you already use with simple rules: when this happens, do that. When a form is submitted, add the person to the CRM, send the reply and create a follow-up task.

• You build it by clicking steps together, not by writing code. Most tools show the workflow as a set of boxes and arrows.
• It works across your existing tools: email, forms, spreadsheets, accounting software, your CRM. You don't have to replace anything.
• The people who know the job can set it up. Gartner expects developers outside formal IT departments to make up at least 80% of low-code tool users by 2026.

Why it matters for small businesses

In a large company, a repetitive admin task is spread across a team. In a small business, it usually lands on the owner or the one admin person, and it comes out of the time they'd otherwise spend on customers.

• Slow replies and missed follow-ups cost jobs. An enquiry that waits until tomorrow morning is competing with whoever replied tonight.
• The cost is hidden. Nobody budgets for "copying details between apps", so it never shows up as a problem until someone is drowning in it.
• You don't need a developer. Many businesses can start with tools they already pay for, and test an idea in days or weeks rather than months.

We covered the hiring side of this in Automate Before You Hire: before you add headcount to keep up with admin, check how much of that work a system could do instead.

Business process automation for small business: where it fits

Low-code automation is good at jobs that are done the same way every time. It is not good at judgement.

Good fits:

• New enquiries from your website into your CRM, with an instant reply
• Quote and invoice reminders
• Booking confirmations and reminders
• Moving details between your job system, spreadsheets and accounting software
• The weekly report someone rebuilds by hand every Monday

Poor fits:

• Decisions that need judgement: approving a refund, handling a complaint, deciding priorities
• Processes that change every week or aren't agreed yet
• The core system your business runs on, where a failure would stop the business

One rule matters more than the tool you pick: fix the process first. If the steps aren't clear and agreed, automating them only makes the mess happen faster, and makes it harder to see.

Three common choices

There is no official league table of automation tools, but three come up again and again for small and medium businesses. Prices change often, so check each vendor's pricing page before you commit.

Zapier

• Pros: the easiest place to start. It connects to more than 9,000 apps, and there is a free plan (100 tasks a month, two-step workflows).
• Cons: you pay per step it runs, so costs climb as your volume grows. Paid plans are priced in US dollars.

Make

• Pros: a visual builder that handles more complex paths, such as different routes for different kinds of enquiry. It lists 3,000+ apps, the free plan includes 1,000 credits a month, and there is a discount for start-ups with fewer than 20 staff.
• Cons: it takes longer to learn than Zapier, and credits are used per action, so busy workflows add up.

Microsoft Power Automate

• Pros: if your business runs on Microsoft 365, the basics are included with your work accounts at no extra cost (standard connectors only). It can also click through older desktop software that has no other way to connect.
• Cons: licensing gets complicated. Premium connectors and desktop automation need a paid licence (Premium is listed at A$22.40 per user per month, paid yearly, excluding GST).

The honest answer to "which one?" is usually: the one that fits the apps you already use and the person who will look after it.

How to start

1. Pick one copy-and-paste job. Choose something that happens daily or weekly and follows the same steps each time.
2. Write the steps down on one page, including what should happen when something goes wrong.
3. Give it an owner. Someone needs to notice if it stops working, and to update it when your apps or your process change.

Then measure the time it saves before you automate the next job. At OZGOAT, we ran 112,000+ automated tasks for our clients in September, and every one of those workflows started as a single job someone was tired of doing by hand.

Not sure which job to start with? A short conversation is usually enough to find it. Book a Discovery Call.

Sources

• Make: Scentia customer story
• Gartner: low-code development technologies forecast, December 2022
• Zapier pricing
• Make pricing
• Microsoft Power Automate pricing (Australia)
• Microsoft Learn: types of Power Automate licences