While it might seem new and intimidating, machine learning in business is already bringing massive benefits to companies and consumers alike.

From increasingly effective product suggestions to accurate journey time predictions and advanced customer analytics, machine learning is an incredibly powerful tool which lets you analyze every important aspect of your business without wasting human hours on the task.

But what exactly is machine learning, and how do you go from knowing that to actually using it?

“Instead of using labels to teach an AI what each object it’s looking at is, this DeepMind project teaches itself because it learns to recognise images and sounds by matching them up with what it can see and hear.

This method of learning is almost exactly like how humans think and learn to understand the world around them.” – Vaughn Highfield, How Google DeepMind is learning like a child: DeepMind uses videos to teach itself about the world

In this article we will cover:

• What is machine learning?
• Benefits of machine learning in business
• Applications of machine learning in business
• Different types of machine learning in business
• Real-world examples of machine learning in business

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Where did The E Myth Summary come from? Michael E. Gerber is the answer.

And when Michael E. Gerber gives you advice for starting a business you listen to it.

With a career spanning over 40 years and working with hundreds of thousands of companies worldwide, Gerber’s expertise is invaluable to anyone looking to start their own venture. Lucky for us, he’s written several books on the topic, the most famous of which I’ll be summarizing in this post.

This E Myth summary will take the core business tips from Gerber’s work and condense them into a single post. It’s all of the value, proven with examples from companies like Facebook and Zenefits, and it doesn’t need you to spend 40 years to learn it.

In particular, I’ll be covering:

• Balancing your business personalities
• Creating a business, not a job
• Working on your business, not in it
• Why your business needs systems
• The idea of your business being your product
• Motivating employees with the idea behind their work
• Make topics human to make them interesting

Let’s get started.

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Keeping everyone on the same page in your business is easy with today’s technology. Using cloud-based calendars, you can have everyone synced up all the time from any device. In this post, I will go through our favorite setups to ensure your team never misses a meeting again.

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Business systemization gained notoriety from the bestselling book by Michael E. Gerber, published in 1986, The E-Myth – Why most businesses don’t work and what to do about it. In 2011, this groundbreaking book was named the number 1 business book of all time by The Wall Street Journal. In The E-Myth (Entrepreneurial Myth) Gerber explains how businesses are usually started by those who know the content of a business – so-called “Technicians”, people who know how to do the technical work involved in an enterprise – rather than by those who know business itself – so-called “Entrepreneurs” – and why start-ups are therefore by definition prone to failing.

In order for a company or business to thrive, it must move beyond relying on the so-called “Technician” who is now also the company owner. Gerber uses the franchise model to demonstrate how a business does this: Franchises are prototype businesses that are operated in terms of well-documented systems, i.e., there are manuals describing in minute detail how to run the business. Gerber argues that the entrepreneur should spend time creating a business that can run by itself, without the presence of the entrepreneur, and this is achieved through business systemization.

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Systematizing your business is one of the biggest challenges any founder or executive faces when trying to scale.

I’ve seen it personally in my businesses and in the experiences of our customers. It’s the problem which led to us creating Process Street when I ran a small business. It’s the problem people and businesses of all sizes now come to Process Street to overcome.

Thousands of customers like Accenture, AstraZeneca, and Salesforce are solving processes from small business needs to critical enterprise and infrastructure processes.

It’s important to learn not just how to get things done, but how to do that repeatedly, effectively, and efficiently as your team grows.

This is where business systematization comes in.

A huge part of that is process management. According to our research, 42% of respondents say their teams have no time to create processes. You cannot systematize if you fail to document your processes.

In fact, process documentation is only the first step. What about adherence, integration, automation?

That’s why, as Process Street’s CEO, I was so excited to collaborate with Foundr to create a course to take you from process-less to process pro. This article describes that original course collaboration. Foundr’s current systems masterclass details are linked below; the original registration deadline no longer applies.

I’ll give you the platform and the playbook to systemize your business in just 10 minutes per day, all delivered through Foundr’s intuitive learning experience.

Foundr magazine is one of the leading media outlets for entrepreneurs, small business owners, and executives. The course comes carefully prepared with video lessons, playbooks, and an explanation of my proven DIA Method.

Foundr currently lists a free Systems masterclass with Vinay Patankar covering the 10-Minute MVP Method. See the current masterclass page for its format and availability.

See current masterclass details

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This is a guest post by Victor Eduoh, a SaaS content strategy consultant and copywriter. He helps early- and growth-stage SaaS companies drive growth, using the SaaS content topic clusters strategy and Product-Led Storytelling, two concepts he developed.

“And, after all, winning business is what writing proposals is all about.” Tom Sant, in his bestselling book, Persuasive Business Proposals, continued:

“Although a great proposal by itself seldom wins a deal, a bad proposal will definitely lose one.“

Tom is right.

Writing a consulting proposal isn’t a silver bullet to land your next client. But fail to craft an excellent, professional one and you won’t close any deal.

Since you found your way to this post, you don’t want that, right? We don’t want it either.

So, in this Process Street article, you’ll find ten practical steps to make your next consulting proposal excellent (i.e., worthy of closing deals).

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is a consulting proposal?
• How do I write a consulting proposal?
• What should you include in a consulting proposal?
• How do you format a consulting proposal?
• My proposal winning superpowers

Sound good? Read on for a free checklist to get started.
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Knowing how to write a procedure is a key skill for anyone looking to build a successful business. Procedures are vital to consistent success for many of the same reasons that processes are important – they let you reliably repeat your successes, isolate and correct your mistakes, and create a business model that lets you scale your operations.

If you don’t know how to write a procedure then you’re dead in the water. Get it right, and the resulting efficiency boosts can put you on track to eclipse your competitors.

This Process Street post will cover the following topics to help you write effective procedures:

• What is a procedure?
• Why are procedures important?
• Preparing to write your procedures
• How to write an effective procedure
• How to write an effective procedure

Read on to learn the 13 steps to writing your business’ procedures effectively, in a way that they will actually be followed instead of getting read once and then forgotten.

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Perhaps you’ve heard about checklists. Perhaps you know someone who uses checklist templates. Who knows, you may even have a simple checklist template or two you use in your own business.

Chances are, if you clicked this link, you’re interested in learning about simple checklist templates. Or specifically, how you can use them to run your business more efficiently.

You probably already know the basics – why checklists are useful, and the value of using a BPM software like Process Street. But you want more.

You want to know the essential checklists, the ones all the top CEOs and successful executives are using. You want ready-made checklists that will save you time, money, and confusion, and you want to learn about some of the immediate benefits of using simple checklist templates, straight from the mouths of those who have used them to run successful businesses of their own.

Well, you clicked to the right article. Here, I’ll be looking at an extensive correspondence between our content team and a number of successful SMB owners who just happen to be simple checklist template champions.

Whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly, or otherwise, we’ve devised this article as a resource that will help you understand how you can use simple checklist templates in your business.

Breaking it down, we’ll look at:

• Benefits of simple checklist templates
• What simple checklist templates are successful business owners using?
• Simple checklist template essentials: Recommendations from top business owners
• How to build a simple checklist template with Process Street

But first, what is simple checklist template, anyway?
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This is a guest post from Shawn Mike. Shawn has been working with writing challenging clients for over five years. His educational background in the technical field and business studies has given him the edge to write on many topics. He occasionally writes blog articles for Dynamologic Solutions.

According to statistics, it is claimed that US organizations suffer a loss of $62 billion a year thanks to unsatisfactory customer service.

Customer service represents your secondary acquisition test, beyond actually getting that customer on board in the first place.

It’s very much a short-term game of conflict resolution, and your business depends mainly on how you deal with customer feedback and requests.

For maximum lifetime value, you need to consider how to synergize customer service with customer success.

It must be kept in mind that customers are the heart of every business and should be at the top of your priority list.

Satisfied customers help increase sales and build brand identity and reports claim that 77% of customers are estimated to recommend a brand or business to a friend depending on how good their experience with your product is.

Which is why focusing on keeping your customer base satisfied with great service and excellent products can go a long way in improving your sales.

Nowadays, consumers expect more than just a great product. They need you to guide them through the perfect experience. A better customer experience equals a greater lifetime value expectancy.

This article is all about figuring out the best way to analyze and improve customer experience by automating a lot of the manual work that can get in the way.

We’ll focus on:

• Understanding customer success
• Difference between customer service and customer success
• How to improve your customer success strategy
• Benefits of customer success automation
• How to successfully automate customer success
• Example customer success process template

Read on to learn more about how to optimize your customer success strategy. There’s even a free Ebook for you at the end of it!
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How do you know whether you’re going to be successful or not with a new business or product?

Well, you’ll probably look to pour your heart and soul into it. You’ll work hard to make it the best product or service you can. You’ll endeavor to make each and every customer happy.

And well done to you for that.

But you’re not the only one who impacts on whether your efforts are successful.

It’s no secret that one of the hardest parts of business is the competitive nature of the market.

What your competition looks like, how it’s constructed, and what opportunities their weaknesses provide you, are crucial factors which can determine your success.

This is where you’ll need to do some kind of competitive position analysis.

In this Process Street article, we’ll look at a framework which is designed to help you understand your competition called Porter’s Five Forces. We’ll cover:

• What is Porter’s Five Forces Model?
• Porter’s Five Forces – Force 1: Threat of new entrants
• Porter’s Five Forces – Force 2: Threat of substitutes
• Porter’s Five Forces – Force 3: Bargaining power of customers
• Porter’s Five Forces – Force 4: Bargaining power of suppliers
• Porter’s Five Forces – Force 5: Competitive rivalry
• Resolving the 5 Forces: An Economic Moat

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