How To Turn SOPs Into Automations - Case Study

You're about to meet the accounting firm owner that used systems and AI to their competitive advantage. They ended up saving over a thousand hours just on one task using these techniques. Now, it doesn't matter if you run an accounting business or maybe you're a builder or an allied health practitioner, maybe you're delivering professional services. This story is the blueprint that every small business owner needs to see. Now, if you've been following along with this series, in video number one, we mapped your critical client flow, which helps to answer the question, where do you get started? What are the first few systems you should document? In video number two, you saw how to build SOPs and systems fast using AI. So you end up saving hours of time and you don't have to do it the old way. In video number three, you discovered why you shouldn't be the one doing all of this and how to identify your systems and AI champion. Now in this video, I want to take you behind the scenes so you could see a real business actually applying this and getting it done. Shannon Schmidt runs Smart Business Solutions, an award winning accounting firm on the Mornington Peninsula here in Australia. Now she's been using System Hub and Systemology for years to build a process first and AI powered firm. Together with her team, she's used systems and automation to save hundreds of hours a year to free herself up and her best team members so that they can do their highest value work. Now, joining her in this interview we'll jump to in a moment is her son Ryan, who stepped into the role of a systems and AI champion. He's the one that helps to extract the knowledge from the team, builds out the SOPs and works with the robots and AI to remove some of the repetitive work. Here's the proof that you don't need decades of experience, you don't need to be a lean Six Sigma consultant. You just need the right mindset and a clear framework. And in this interview I want to unpack exactly how they did it, how they got started, what mistakes they made, how they got the team on board, where automation came in and the real results that they're now seeing. So let's go ahead and jump over to the interview right now. I couldn't be more excited. Today I'm joined by Shannon and Ryan Schmidt. We're going to be talking all things systems and maybe a great way to start is if you can tell us, Shannon, just a little bit about smart business solutions, what you guys do, who you serve and a little bit about the team just to kind of set the stage. So everybody understands a bit more about your business?

Yeah, sure. Actually, I probably love systems just as much as you do as well. So. Smart Business Solutions. We're accountants, financial planners and mortgage brokers. We're based in Mornington. I set up the practice just over 18 years ago, and we've got just over 20 team members. So when you. You're growing and we've grown organically. I never actually purchased a practice before. A lot of accountants do that. We've just grown as time's gone on. And obviously, from our perspective, systems and technology are super important. When you're going through that stage, I'm.

Curious, Shannon, what for you got you to a point where you were kind of like, I want to have Ryan come into the business. Was that something like, did you play a part in that? Or was that kind of Ryan going, oh, you know what? I want to work in the business? And then you found the role for him. I know he's kind of falling in as a systems champion and helping to develop a lot of the processes. I'm just curious if that's something you guided or if it happened organically.

Yeah, it actually was quite a surprise, to be honest. The younger, our youngest son has always said he's going to take over smart one day. That's always been his aspiration since he was probably about seven. Ryan was obviously studying 18 months into his aviation degree and then just came to my husband and I and said, I want to change degrees and I want to do accounting. I like the systems, I like the logic and the maths. I guess it was, wasn't it, that day when you came to us and said that you wanted to change, and obviously I was like, that's fantastic. I'm really excited about that. And he had been just supporting in the business on a casual basis, and because of his methodical approach and analytical approach to things, he was really helping us on that front. So when Ryan started, he likes to problem solve, he likes to do it methodically, logically, step it all out. And so that's where I was like, well, actually, he doesn't need to know exactly how to do everything in the business, but if he can kind of ask questions of the relevant people, he can actually map out the systems and processes. And someone that's good at their role, they might be good at their role in accounting or in admin, but they may not be the systems person or they just may not have the time to be the systems person. So Ryan coming in, and so he's three days a Week while at uni, two days meant that, you know, in the early days when he started and he's now on the accounting side, but he's actually looking at things in such a way of, I don't know how to do this, how do I map out what's step one, step two, step three? So he's actually raising those questions. And that's where he kind of fell into being that systems champion.

I think that role of the systems champion is becoming so important at the moment. Like, we're talking about it a lot because a lot of business owners struggle to get their processes documented and they need someone to help them. So that's why we're saying, hey, you need a systems champion.

And I think it's a great starting role when you come into the organization because you learn so much. I'd be curious to know, when you came into the role, did you have any idea on what the systems champion role would be? Or is it kind of revealed itself now that you've been in the role for some time and you've kind of figuring it out as you go? Or like, is the picture that was in your head different from the reality?

Yeah, in my mind, I think when I started, I thought, yeah, the systems champion would be the one riding the systems. You're almost really the one refining it and getting the systems off other people. Yeah, yeah. In my mind, the system champion was someone who knew the processes and then put them in a system hub. But more so you're just asking people how they do this, how they do that, and putting it into system hub from them.

Yeah, And I think he didn't fall in. It was funny when Ryan started was it was to support on the financial planning and then to move into the accounting. When he first started, it wasn't like we said, right, your job is system champion. He just started in this support role and he was like, very direct, as you know, people that are analytical. And he'd be like, this system isn't good at all. This needs to be updated. This process. This makes no sense. Okay, well, if it makes no sense, go ask someone as to how we do it and then update it. And I guess he spent a lot of time quizzing everyone and then saying, I need to fix this system, I need to fix this. Okay, you are now systems champion. And if you love fixing these systems, which, you know, he really enjoyed doing, so we said it really fell into that. And I think you were asking a lot of the right questions because he was trying to do it step by step. And he'd say, no, you've skipped a step, go back. No. What do you mean? Where do you go? Where's the document kept? Where do I find this? Where to find that? So I think you. And maybe that came from the aviation, but I think he had those skills to ask people those Right. Questions that people often overlook when they're writing processes.

Yeah. Are there any skills that you think that you've got that make you a good systems champion? Because a lot of business owners, they. They need to find their systems champion and they don't know what to look for. So I'm curious, what makes you good at the work that you do?

Yeah, I think if you're a business owner, you really want to look for someone who's asking, what if? Yeah, I think a lot of people tend to say, oh, you know, most of the time it's going to go like this. And then they put that in the system hub. That it's just the most of the time steps. But you really got to include that. What if you know something else is not included here or all that. Yeah, you just got to find that someone who's asking all the questions for every part.

Are there any other things that stand out for you? Or maybe Mum knows, Like, is he curious? Is he.

A good communicator? Are there any. Like, if you were to think of the qualities for Ryan that someone else might then start to look out for, what would you.

Yeah, I. That questioning, I think, is a really good one. That, that they don't just accept. Oh, okay. That's how you do it. Okay. The. But why. Okay, what else could go wrong? So is that always going to be like that if, if there's an issue. So I think. And it's trying to map it out so it's not just accepting everything that someone says it's getting. Also I think what he does well is. Is probably ask people, okay, well, then show me. And then click through this. So they're really making those. I think the questioning's the biggest one. And asking initially, well, what's the goal? What's the end goal of this whole system that you're trying to map out what does good look like and then why are we trying to do that? So I think it's probably, you know, and the communication. You're very direct, aren't you, Ryan? So you don't.

Use a. Fluffing it around the edges on things and really getting focused. So, you know, what's the end goal here? What is the end goal of what we're trying to achieve.

Great.

Okay, now let's go back through the steps on achieving that. And so I think you're often saying, well, why does that do that? And questioning is it getting to the end goal? So I think someone who is a system champion needs to be organized themselves and focused on the end, the end goal of something because otherwise I could get led down the garden path and not actually get to the, to the end. I think the having to do lists, you know, I'm putting the actions down. I think that's probably another good skill.

Are you naturally organized, do you reckon when you're outside of work?

I wouldn't say my room is clean.

But yeah, usually with I guess even university and all that stuff. I like to know when due dates are, what work I have to do, try and plan out how I attack assignments and all that stuff. Yeah, see I'd say generally pretty system wise, I guess in real life.

And what's your comfort like with technology? Like especially right now, there's a lot of new tools getting released and obviously AI. Is that something that just comes naturally to you or how do you see yourself technically with some of these new tools?

Yeah, I think technically pretty good, pretty like almost familiar. A lot of the tools feel similar to other things. I think part of that's almost like video games, kind of similar connections there. Generally when I'm starting a new task I always think, oh, can ChatGPT do this bit for me? Yeah, yeah, just try and get him to do something. If he can't, then I do it as usual. But if he can, then it's a big time saver.

Yeah, yeah, I love that.

And I think Ryan's taken. We've done a lot of automation in the business and using, you know, the likes of Power, Automate, ChatGPT, Copilot, Copilot in particular because obviously the security side of things as well. And I think that the gaming, I mean, I spent many years wanting to just dream about smashing his gaming computer as many parents do about their kids. And now I'm like, you keep gaming because those skills after all these years now you actually find out those skills are really, really useful because your gamers are going to be the best at automating your system. So if you've gone through and systemized and, and put it all up on your system hub and then taking it to that next level with AI and the robotic process automation. And so Ryan has taken a lot of processes where he's actually walking through and documenting as the system champion and then he's identifying and going, well, we don't need to be doing that process ourself. I'm going to try and automate that process, you know, as he's going through. So I think that's where now as far as the team's engagement, many of the team are saying, oh, Ryan, can you, can you map out this process? Because they want to see what he thinks about automation side. So Ryan has automated a lot of administration functions that the administrators may not have been going to organize automate themselves, but having someone externally come and see that they've actually he's gone in and done that as well. And if you didn't have the systems in place, you wouldn't be able to. You can't automate something that you don't fully know or have it mapped out.

I think that's one thing I love about your story and smart story is how you keep an eye on the numbers and how you translate the savings that come from systemizing and automating. I don't know if you've got any stories that come to mind of particular tasks or a task where you've just had a huge win by systemizing and then doing some automation over the top of that.

Actually, I think Ryan's got a huge task that he did there. Remember the one that used to take how many hours a week? Talk about that phone.

I want eight hours a week even. Yeah. So there's a lot of file noting between. We have a few different systems that we use like FYI X Plan dash and all that. And file noting the same file note between all three of them is very time consuming, especially for like the main financial advisor. So that's usually passed down into whatever admin role and then that can take three, five minutes per file note. But during the day you'd get at least like 20 file notes from every client. You got to record all your processes and all your like client calls and everything. So that I managed to automate that in a bot, which still takes three to five minutes to do each file note. But you can just put that on the computer and put the computer aside and it just ticks through all of them for the whole day and then you're done. So that's easily saving like an hour a day per person, would you say? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then we're talking. You're a team of 20 of us. Yep. So there's at least 20 hours a.

Day of potentially on the phone. It's financial planning has huge compliance requirements that have to do these File notes. So on the financial planning, there's, you know, there's four of us. But I think you were initially, Ryan, spending probably what, 10 hours a week, a day and a half or something doing file notes once a week for the whole prior week.

Yeah.

And. And then you learned how to do. That was your first bot, wasn't it, that you came out and you went, I've automated this. And then it was funny. Your first reaction was, oh, so what do I do now? Is that not enough work for me? Is that have I just reduced my work work level and work hours and therefore wage for the week? I was like, no, we'll find more work for you. Don't panic about that. We'll automate other things. But that probably triggered a lot of automations as well.

How's the team been receptive to this? Because that is a little bit of a fear. Just what you talked about there for some team members going, oh, well, if I've just made myself redundant or I've now systemized a particular task, do you need me now? How do you approach that with the team?

Yeah, I think change management's a challenging one and it's going to keep happening generally, I guess I tried to bring the team on the journey. So I, you know, was. Was trying to help train up everyone on the team. We did have two then in the end kind of, you can still nearly say opted out, where they just literally said, this is not for me. After about six months, even though we had everyone do training on it and we're all trying to help each other, but the rest of the team are so empowered. I'm like, if something is not the best use of your time, let's automate it. You know, we're not trying to replace jobs and I don't think AI is replacing people's jobs. Someone using AI will replace someone's job. Like that's without a doubt. So I'm trying to upskill everyone across the whole practice, whether they're admin, accounting, anything in the practice, marketing, everything. And I think a lot of people, everyone's embraced it because I'm like, what is the most boring, tedious part of your job that you hate to do? Like Ryan's file noting that he was doing, yeah, and let's automate it and then you can do some more exciting things. So we are doing a lot more business consulting with clients also in the technology space and in general, because we are actually trying to create capacity to be able to do it, which is actually what clients need more of at the moment as well in these economic times.

Yeah.

As far as other team members that, like the ones that resisted and okay, so they decided to opt out the other ones to get on board. And the key part of that change management I've seen you do, which you do better than anyone else, is training your team. Like, I've come along to some of your internal workshops when we've run custom GPT trainings, you've sent staff to attend the different webinars we run. You've got a couple of people going through the Systems Champion Academy, like, what is it that gets you to go, well, that's an investment I need to make because a lot of business owners, they see that as a cost and like, oh, what I've got to invest into my team to make this happen. And you look at the numbers. So you're a numbers person, so you're not wasting.

No, I mean these, the, you know, by training up your team because your opportunity cost of is, well, either they keep doing something, say manually that could be automated and so you've got efficiencies from, from them actually automating it. They're going to enjoy their work more because they're not doing such of the. Some of the mundane, compulsory required work that we can automate and. But ultimately, if you don't empower them and people do, I think people naturally do want to learn more, they do want the excitement and it puts us, puts them in a really good place that we are trying to stay at the forefront of what's going on. So that makes their role challenging and exciting at the one time. And I think if you don't do that, you know, you could potentially lose people to those that do it. And the opportunity cost of that is every time you have a change of team member, it's months, you know, to get someone back up to speed. Learn your systems, learn your processes. You know, not all accountants are the same and it's probably goes across all businesses. Even if someone's got experience, it takes time to get them back up. So it's trying to keep people engaged and, you know, so they know and feel that they are at the forefront of what's going on. Because at this stage it's a very changing market and once people get going.

I often find that it's a lot less scary than sometimes they thought it would be. It's almost like you build up something in your head and then you're like, oh, well, that was so much easier for the business owner who's hasn't yet taken the leap. Shannon, I don't know if you've got any thoughts from, I mean from your financial background. I always struggle to answer the question when someone says what's the ROI of systemizing my business? Because I'm like, well, it touches every part of your business. How would you, I suppose, explain or justify the cost investment in systems development?

I mean the biggest risk a business owner has is a key person that they are heavily reliant on leaving tomorrow or heaven forbid, get hit by a bus. You know, these things can happen and you know, you could have someone that has been there 10 years. If you don't have your business systemized, how much is your step back going to be while you build yourself up? And so it's empowering the team and getting their roles systemized because also maybe someone in your business is just doing what they did yesterday because they did it yesterday and the day before and the day before. But maybe they're actually, they've got the potential for bigger and better things within your business and could help the business owner a lot more if they had some of those processes systemized and could push them down to a more junior person. But I'm always saying to the team, you need to systemize and document everything so that when you're on leave, no one needs to call you because they can follow the process. They've got the process there. But it also means that by doing that you've actually kind of, you're actually future proofing your business to be enable you to, you know, to run should someone leave or you get opportunities where they go up, up in the business and take on further roles. Also if you ever go to sell the business just like McDonald's. McDonald's sells because of its systems and processes and the structure. Your business would be worth a lot more if you've actually got everything systemized so that you maybe in retirement can take holidays and the business is still running and you've got passive income. So that's kind of often say to clients that they need to think about the end in mind. What does the end in mind look like? Let's get your business organized for the end in mind that you may either sell the business or the business is running so well and you're not having to work in it anymore. Why would you sell it? You know, so it, I think the investment, it's got to be considered that it is an investment in your business which could be future kind of value of the business. But you're actually investing in the fact that if someone leaves, you have a problem.

Do you reckon this is a role that you'll stay in for some time? Like, is this.

A satisfying role where you're like, you know, I could sit in this role for a while. Or do you have aspirations to move into certain parts of the business or leadership or other roles?

Oh, I definitely want to follow my, like, accounting progression and career and that. But yeah, being at my mum's business as well, I do have an interest in the business itself as a whole. I think the systems is part of the business as a whole. So it's definitely key to stay in that area and continue following that because that just helps the business grow and expand.

I always say that this is quite possibly the best gift a business owner could give you. And from your mum giving it to you, like, this is an exceptional gift that you probably don't realize just yet, but in years to come, when you go, there is a difference between.

Knowing how to be an accountant and running an accounting business. And she's teaching you in this role how to run an accounting business. And it's a lot of things that you don't learn from uni. So it's a huge opportunity laid in on top of the whole AI opportunity and riding the front of that wave. Like, I think for a lot of systems champions, it's huge. I don't know if that's something you thought about.

Oh, absolutely. And that's why when I had Brielle, my operations manager, and Ryan both doing the systems champions together, obviously Ryan had just moved his direction and I actually thought, you need to understand systems processes and how a business runs and you need to understand how to also then document it and think about it, how business runs. And too many accountants, they go through, they're looking at financial statements and they just, they only know the numbers side of things. They don't understand the underlying operations.

Yeah.

Of a business. And within smart, we always start. All of our accountants start with bookkeeping. Whereas a lot of accountants come into the industry out of uni never having done bookkeeping either. But your best accountants are ones that have actually done bookkeeping so that they know what's going on behind the scenes and why we've got at the moment. Well, there's five or six of my team doing the systems champion at the moment. The reason for that is that more and more, when we're working with clients, accountants need to be business advisors and business consultants, not just the one that says, you know, what does your tax return look like? What are your financials at the end of the year. And as we have AI and robotic process automation and all these changes going on, we need to understand how a business runs, how to map it out. And we will never know a client's business as well as they do, but we'll probably be able to guide them more because we'll ask the right questions to get the answers and guide them on, helping them on the systems side of things. So I actually think that the systems champion, like it's a no brainer, a for accountant they all should be doing. So there's a tip, Dave, you better go out in front of the accountant and say you need to be doing this. But I think every business owner, you need to think how do I operationally, you know, run my business? McDonald's were just way ahead of their time. Now we've got the opportunity that systems and processes and technology has meant we can do what the large companies have been doing forever on a small business scale and, and get things and, and so you can scale actually so you can scale your small business. Otherwise it's just you, you know, buying yourself a job in your own business.

When do you think the right time to do this is as far as like size of the business? And I don't know if you thought of this. When you did Smart, did you start getting some of these processes in place from day one when it was you, you know, solopreneur or is it like. And how do you advise your clients when the right time is?

So I guess when I started Smart, it was a lot around. Checklists were what we actually did. Probably a bit like the aviation one before you fly, ticker, you know, finish off the accounts, tick it all off. It was as soon as I ended up having more than just me. And so all of a sudden what do you mean? My employee doesn't read my mind and do exactly what I want them to do. Step 1, 2, 3, 4. So that was when I actually, I think as soon as you've got a team that is going to be working with you and if it's one person, you know, most people want to succeed, people want to do the good, do a good job. You need to enable them to be able to do that. You need to empower them to be able to do it and give them the systems and processes so that they can. So I think as soon as you're actually getting an employee, well, if you want them to do what you've been doing, then map out your process otherwise they won't know and just do it one at a time, just do one process at a time. I always look at it when I'm looking at what am I going to systemize or automate what process, if I refined it, fixed it, changed it would do that would give us the biggest value and once we've done that, it would help things streamline. That's kind of the one I start with, you know, so trying to work out the biggest bang for your buck.

And when you think of value, what, what are you thinking in terms of like value to the client, value to you in time saved? Like how.

It could be all of those. It could be all of those. Because it could be, it could be streamlining the say, onboarding of clients process so it's a better experience for the client. And that could be. So it could be on client experience. It could be just streamlining time from a dollar perspective, time that we're spending, maybe it's not the best use of our time, or it could be a new compliance requirement that, you know, lots of regulation keeps changing. We have to add these in. So it'll be. And it may just even then save me time, you know, so that's, that's what I'm kind of looking at all of those angles as to how that's going to help the business. Saving me time means I can do something else within the business.

Yeah. I love the example that you guys set for the small business community. You guys are right on it. And as soon as like having been a System Hub client, I think we're close to 10 years now, you've been able to take advantage of this AI opportunity because you were systemized, because you were ready. And I think it's really setting a standard. So appreciate you guys coming along and sharing your story, inspiring some other systems champions and business owners, and no doubt we'll have a part two and part three as we watch your story continue. So thank you.

Thanks very much for having us. Thank you.

What an inspiration. You've just seen how Shannon and Ryan have pulled all of this together in the real world to save some serious time and build a business that's no longer dependent on any key person. So the question is, what's your next move? What are you going to do? The reality is all business owners, no matter what industry they're in, they have the same opportunity right now. Best of all, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. We've built the system to systemize your business and it's ready to get started right now. System Hub is where your critical client flow lives. It's where you'll store all of your documented SOPs and checklists. It's got all of the AI tools to help you generate processes and make things really easy. That's going to be where you store, share and actually get your team to use all of this. So if you're serious about getting off the tools and out of the daily operations, here's what you need to do next. Go to systemhub.com go I've put together a simple page that explains how everything works. Now you're going to get access to a range of different templates and trainings to get you up and running fast. System Hub is more than just software. It's a complete ecosystem to make sure you get the result you're looking for. Don't let this be another video that you've watched and you've forgotten about by next week. While this is still fresh in your mind, take a couple of minutes, open up the new tab, type in systemhub.com go and I'll see you on the other side.