Turning economic unpredictability into your advantage with automation

As economic uncertainty has ramped up over the past few months, my team and I have been collecting stories of customers that recognized the challenge of changing economic conditions and chose Make as the solution. Thanks to its approachability for even semi-technical users, Make's automation platform has empowered these businesses to boost their efficiency, achieve greater impact with existing resources, and proactively solve challenges that weren't even on their radar last quarter. If you're on the outside looking in, it's almost like these companies have discovered an unfair advantage; we prefer to think of it as innovating your way out of unpredictability. Here are their stories.

Solve complex problems in just 30 minutes

Automation and the auto industry go hand in hand – Henry Ford could have told you that. But automation has evolved from physical assembly lines to handling complex business processes, and companies in the transport space have been some of the most enthusiastic adopters of automation platforms. ChargeGuru, a provider of electric vehicle charging solutions across Europe, is one of my favorite examples.

The EV space is competitive, and ChargeGuru's roughly 200-strong workforce was facing slowdown in closing deals and promptly paying workers to install charging stations. The reason? Complex information was being transferred from PDFs into Salesforce manually.

Laurent Salomon, ChargeGuru's Head of Engineering, identified this pain point as soon as he joined the company. Combining Make's no-code interface and his development background, he constructed a scenario to solve this task – in only 30 minutes.

After some polishing, this scenario alone saved hours of work starting immediately and extending indefinitely into the future. The knock-on effects were a slashed fail-to-deliver rate and proof that building with Make should be core to how ChargeGuru's development team builds day-to-day. All in half an hour. That's the definition of moving fast without breaking things.

How a one-woman company doubled productivity without hiring

Small businesses can be the most vulnerable to shifting economic winds. Even in the best of times, one-person operations may not have the resources to hire help when issues – expected or otherwise – crop up. Sarah Dudgeon, a "solopreneur" and founder of e-commerce website Art Of Your Success, was in exactly this position.

Her business was growing in order volume and complexity. Managing inventory across multiple locations, reformatting data across platforms, and checking her work took hours and was error prone. Hiring an assistant would have cut deeply into Sarah's margins, so she needed another way. After evaluating various automation platforms intended for businesses with dedicated development departments – and price points to match – she discovered Make.

With an intimate knowledge of her business operations and just a little technical know-how, Sarah set up a handful of inexpensive-to-run scenarios: tasks that once took hours now took seconds, with increased accuracy to boot. It was like having another full-time worker at a fraction of the cost.

Automating didn't just eliminate Sarah's need to hire help, it freed her up to work on big-picture issues like identifying opportunities to grow her brand – an invaluable gift when such opportunities can seem few and far between.

Pivot to new markets with automated localization

Other small and medium-sized businesses may be in more difficult positions. In a recent episode of The Daily, a small businesswoman described how supply chain issues hamstrung her business overnight. One solution she brainstormed was introducing existing stock to overseas markets, yet she seemed uncertain about maintaining foreign-language websites. Since one of our customers has shown that rapid, cost-effective localization is already possible, I could only think, "Make can help."

Ghostflow, an agile dozen-person media company, was enlisted by a similar-sized client to create investment websites for eight new markets. The catch: each market's language differed from the client's. Oh, and the content had to be SEO optimized to make its mark. Even a few years ago, localizing content for eight new markets simultaneously would have meant marshalling expensive agencies, countless translators, and a long, slow timeline – with inconsistent results at best.

But with just three Make scenarios, Ghostflow identified their client's newly published content, translated it with a combination of AI apps, optimized the translated pages for SEO keywords and metadata, published that content, and shared it across major social media platforms in near-real time. Leveraging automation gave a small but up-and-coming business a global reach almost instantly.

How AI automation lets blue-chip companies move like startups

It's not just small and medium businesses that feel the economic pressure – household names need to adapt too, and it's often even more challenging to turn a big ship. But Make's automations are powerful enough to fuel international players and anyone looking to scale up to that level. Globant, a Make partner, displayed this when they put Make plus AI to work for the one and only McDonald's.

Globant, itself a company of 29,000, was tasked by this major client with implementing a solution to seamlessly connect CRMs, marketing tools, and sales management systems. The Make-powered automation engine they rolled out used AI-driven data processing to flexibly deal with changing marketing and sales campaign inputs in real time across McDonald's locations in Spain, Italy, and Germany. It's worth noting that building scenarios at this scale hinged on Make's enterprise-grade security, dedicated support, and 99.5% uptime.

The reliable insights from Make and AI meant that campaign decisions were smarter and delivered 20% improvements in workflow efficiency and ROI. When it comes to one of the best-known brands on the planet, a 20% improvement in anything is very real value – especially as investors search for safe bets in fluctuating markets.

Adapt with Make

Whether you're a one-person operation or a multinational concern, Make's automation and AI platform can help you roll with the economic punches at every level – and come out on top. Sign up for an account or talk to sales to get started with Make today.