InsightIQ Blog

"Set it and forget it!"

Mar 4 2009

Ron Popeil had it right when he used the above phrase on his infomercial for the Ronco Rotisserie. The recent economic downturn shows how every business needs to be able to "Set it, and forget it". Automation is extremely important during tough economic times, and can be extremely beneficial to any business. How do you know what to focus on automating? Ask the simple question, what is your biggest pain point?

One client has multiple campaigns that run each day, all of which rely on two separate database loads. As expected, files don't always make it in on time and this leads to a delay in the campaigns. The pain point was the manual intervention needed when there was a load delay. We would need to hold the campaigns and then, once the load completed, we would run them manually. Needless to say, many hours were spent supporting this process.

We implemented a simple trigger based approach for these campaigns, starting with a trigger off of the database load. The end result consisted of two separate campaign streams running daily, with notifications going to the client upon the successful completion of each stream. There was an immediate drop in time we were spending on these campaigns. We were able to accomplish this without making an investment in an expensive automation application. Essentially, as Ron Popeil would say, we were able to "Set it, and forget it!"

A key to successful automation is thinking inside of the box. We have many tools already at our fingertips. Being creative allows us to maximize value from these tools, and provide additional services to our clients. What is your biggest pain point? Could a script, SSIS package, or an open source application be the key to solving your pain point?

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