Most of the repetitive work can be automated, but still there are many repetitive tasks every day that people do manually. In Corporate Lab, we don’t like spending any minute on tasks that can be easily automated. So, since the beginning, we made a crucial decision for our productivity — whenever a task gets repetitive, we must automate its execution. These are some examples of automations in the workplace here in Corporate Lab.

Automation in the workplace: How to get rid of boring tasks?

With automation tools. In our case, we are big Make fans (formerly Integromtat). This low-code automation tool has connections with any other tool you can imagine. And in case they don’t, it features an HTTP module that allows us to make API calls (sometimes to our own API that does the job).

With Make -or with other automation tools like Zapier- we can set up different kinds of triggers. Sometimes it’s a webhook call, other times it’s a programmed action. Once a scenario is triggered, a sequence of modules will be executed — some will send an email, others will create tasks, update tables, send push notifications, etc.

But Make is not the only tool we use. Some months ago, we switched our task organizer and started using ClickUp. This project management tool allows task organization, automating sales processes, managing roadmaps, and more. Since then, we have been using its features to automate task creation when an event occurs.

What can be automated?

Anything! We don’t want to limit your options, but we will show you some of our automations in the workplace so you can get some inspiration.

The Innovation Takes Guts Podcast: Automating recurring tasks

As you might know, at Corporate Lab we produce an innovation podcast — Innovation Takes Guts. A new episode is launched every two weeks, where Brais Comesaña interviews different people from the innovation ecosystem. Each podcast episode requires several tasks to be executed. As you can imagine, producing a podcast has a lot of work behind the scenes and many different things need to be done in order to prepare and successfully launch new episodes. 

So, when a new podcast guest accepts our collaboration proposal, a bunch of tasks are created automatically. This includes generating tasks like writing a script, creating images for promotion, video edition, copywriting, sharing it via social media, etc. All of these tasks have different owners and different due dates. This allows us to never forget anything and to execute all of them in the right order, so other owners are not blocked.

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Surippa: Optimizing an ecommerce sales funnel

Surippa is one of Corporate Lab’s ventures. This is an online shop where you can find the most comfortable flip flops you ever tried. And like every store owner out there, we wanted to deliver the product as soon as we could, as well as asking clients personally for feedback.

This automation works with a webhook call in Make that receives a notification every time an order is received in Shopify. After the order has been received, a task is created in ClickUp and is assigned to the logistics center, so they can start preparing the order. Furthermore, a row is added in our Airtable where we keep track of the order and the feedback received from the clients. And last but not least, a message is sent to our Discord channel to celebrate every single sale. All this is done thanks to the modules that Make offers to connect third-party tools. 

Another automation in this ecommerce is to get feedback from a client after they have received their product. Thanks to Connectif, every time an item is sold, a workflow gets activated and the sequence starts. An email is sent to the customer 10 days after the purchase, where we ask how the product feels and what they think about it. We receive the feedback in an Arengu form, whose content gets dumped in the same Airtable.

Equipzilla: Improving user experience and notifying new leads

Equipzilla is another venture created at Corporate Lab — an online machinery rental marketplace. Here, we have several automations, the most important ones are weekly and monthly reports and notifications for highly-qualified leads. The first automation sends a report to our clients using the MySQL and Sendinblue modules from Make. The second one, sends a notification to our Discord channel, in case we receive exceptional leads and want to take special actions.

In this automation, we set up several scenarios to run every Monday at 09:00 AM. Once they start, the mySQL query gets executed, the results get stored in a CSV and then they either get sent to an email (using Sendinblue) or to a Discord channel.

Filtering useful content with a newsletter scrapper

Probably one of our best automations. Our team used to receive tons of emails containing great content, but this takes a lot of time to go through. This is why we decided to create an automation to scrape every newsletter and extract its content. 

This automation combines several tools like Make, our own API and Retool. Every time we receive a newsletter email, its content is sent to our API within a Make scenario. In our API, we scrape the different links of each newsletter and then we store them in our mySQL database. Retool connects to this database, showing us nice insights!

Fixing bugs and errors way faster

Yes, this automation is not as pretty as the others, but it might be one of the most important ones. In the past, when one of our Make scenarios or API calls failed, we didn't receive any notification, or the wrong person received it. So, for the most important scenarios, we have set up rules so in case a mistake happens, a notification is sent in Discord. This way, we fix the bugs faster than before.

Team building: The Friday Song

Last, our most enjoyable automation: The Friday Song. It is simple — a random team member gets chosen and has to post a song in the #random Discord channel. Every Friday. At 10:00 am. It is a nice way to share the music we enjoy with our colleagues and, hey, sometimes, you will be surprised when you find out someone else shares that song you love as well!

Automations in the workplace are key to save time and improve productivity, one of our team core values. If you are interested in our way of working and want to start a new venture with our agile team, drop us a line!