Everyone chases sophisticated automation while burning hours on tasks a computer could handle in seconds. The irony? The biggest returns almost always come from the simplest solutions—but they don’t feel impressive enough to pursue.
I recently spoke with Kivo Daily about why small automations consistently outperform comprehensive digital transformations. What we discovered challenges everything the tech industry tells you about scaling operations.
Here’s what most miss: before you implement enterprise software or chase AI-powered overhauls, eliminate the obvious friction first. My mother’s bakery proved this perfectly. She spent 30 minutes every night manually calculating production sheets—tedious work that drained energy and introduced errors. We built software that turned those 30 minutes into 5 seconds. That’s 180+ hours reclaimed annually from one simple automation.
My years as a Division I golfer taught me that excellence emerges from perfecting fundamentals, not attempting advanced techniques prematurely. The same applies to business. You’re playing a long game where small mistakes compound. Companies that chase transformative implementations before eliminating obvious inefficiencies waste both resources and time.
The framework is straightforward: identify repetitive tasks, score them by time consumption and error frequency, then automate anything with low strategic value. One client eliminated an entire day’s worth of manual data entry with a tool we built in a weekend. Another removed bottlenecks that were slowing their growth by 40%. These weren’t sophisticated systems—they were targeted solutions that solved specific pain points.
If you’ve ever wondered why automation projects fail to deliver promised returns, it’s usually because businesses skip the high-ROI basics to pursue impressive-sounding complexity.
Read the complete breakdown on Kivo Daily to see the three-factor evaluation model and how to identify your highest-return opportunities this week.
You can always adjust a fast-moving car, but you can’t steer a parked one.