The Sundae CreativeAt The Sundae Creative, every order or enquiry used to travel by hand between the store, inbox, files and calendar. Folders were made, confirmations sent, deadlines noted and invoices raised one at a time, all living in my head as the designer and back office rolled into one. Every ping pulled me out of design work, and at volume things slipped: quotes waiting on replies, missed follow-ups, confusion over which file version was current.
I set out to take the repetitive admin off my plate so design time stopped bleeding into order chasing. Over about 3-6 months, I connected Shopify, Dropbox and Outlook using Zapier and Make.com, along with CRM automations where available, to handle scheduling, folder creation, templated client communications and deadline tracking automatically. It was a genuine learning process, building and adjusting the automations as I found gaps or edge cases the workflow needed to cover.
The result was close to a 30% faster turnaround on orders. Errors dropped, client communication got more consistent and timely, and I could hold onto steadier throughput even when order volume spiked, instead of the whole process depending on memory and hours worked.
