Automation has become a top priority for small businesses around the world – and rightly so. Automation can provide significant competitive advantages to business owners, especially those with heavy workloads. In fact, according to a recent estimate, around 25% of CEO time is currently spent on activities that can be performed by machines.
If you want to reap the productive benefits of automation but aren’t sure where to start or are looking to further automate your business, here are some tips to get you started.
1. Analysis Repeated Tasks in Your Workflow
To find opportunities for this, start by looking for routine manual processes that consume a lot of time and resources. The more frequent the task, the more likely you are to earn by automating it.
2. Start Tiny, Then Go Big
The bigger the task, the more challenges you are likely to face trying to plan it. That’s why it’s best to start with small, predictable tasks before trying to fully automate entire processes critical to your business.
3. Know the process before You Automate It
Before you automate any task, it stands to reason that you should fully understand each part of the process. This way, you can easily break the work into smaller steps that are easier to program, iterate on, and optimize later.
4. Use tools to Speed Up the Process
There are plenty of free online tools that allow you to plan anything from data entry to your marketing efforts. You can even key a drive specific to your business. It will cost you more, but the investment can quickly pay for itself (no pun intended). And if you don’t have the cash to invest yet, now might be the time to apply for a business line of credit.
5. Unite Software With Larger Capabilities
If you haven’t already, it’s worth putting your business on a cloud computing service like Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud. These platforms offer many benefits, such as built-in tools for automation, regular updates, and the ability to scale with your business as it grows.
6. Save Your Work
It’s best to automate tasks that aren’t directly related to your company’s core competencies. Not only will this allow you to devote more manpower to profitable work, but it will also give you more time to focus on ways to help your business grow and prosper in your market.
7. Optimize Your Lead Generation
Gone are the days of collecting and managing leads through cold calling and sticky notes. To keep your business competitive in the digital age, you can use cloud-based software like Salesforce to help you generate leads and nurture them when they inevitably do.
8. Send the Right Email at the Right Time
Automating your emails with Pardot can help you increase customer engagement by allowing you to strategically schedule your emails to send at the right time, deliver personalized messages, and even test A /B your content.
9. Make Partnership More Seamless
No matter the size of your business, it can be easy to lose important information when teams work together online. Those Platforms like Slack make it quick and easy to share knowledge in one place, offering automated workflows, dedicated channels, and tons of add-on tools.
10. Take All Your Professional Calls
Whether you want to avoid losing potential customers to missed calls or simply want to increase your productivity, Voice over IP (VoIP) phone systems can make managing phone calls easier. VoIP works over the Internet, allowing you to offer automated customer support and access to urgent voicemail when you’re out of the office, so you can respond immediately.
11. Make sure to schedule Your Social Media Posts
Social media management tools like Hootsuite allow you to schedule posts to all the most popular social media platforms in one place, freeing up time that can be better spent on customer support.
12. Hire From a Various Talent Pool
Recruiting great talent for your business is easier when you have more options. Moreover, you can even manage all the apps on one site.
13. Provides 24/7 Customer Service
A growing problem for many small businesses is that they can only provide customer support during business hours. When you’re ready to take the next step with automation, Zendesk can make it easy to provide 24/7 customer service. Zendesk Suite empowers your customers to get answers right away with helpful features like help centres and AI-powered response bots. The best part? You can customize almost anything.
14. Manage Inventory With Ease
Automating your inventory system may seem unnecessary and complicated right now, but if you’re planning to grow your business, it can set you up for success. Inventory management platforms, like the one offered by NetSuite, can help make your business more scalable by increasing the overall accuracy, efficiency, and traceability of your inventory.
15. Handle HR From Anywhere
For small businesses, responsibility for human resources may fall to a single employee or office manager. This is where HR automation comes in handy. Robust tools like Zoho People or Zenefits can let you automate routine work like new employee onboarding, employee management, and time-off requests. Plus, you can do it all from a mobile device, so your hiring manager can tackle urgent tasks on the go.
16. Pay Less for Payroll
As the report of the American Payroll Association, automation can reduce payroll processing costs by up to 80%. Today, a growing number of online payroll services make it easier than ever to streamline your payroll, allowing you to automate error-prone processes like tax payments, electronic filings, and direct deposit.
17. Speed Up Your Accounting
Accounting has always been a necessary and boring job for any small business. That is, until now. QuickBooks has opened up a whole new world of possibilities that can streamline your accounting-related tasks, allowing you to automatically collect bank statements, automatically categorize expenses, and more.
There are Lots of Possibilities to Automate your Small Business. First, you should start it with a place where you are comfortable and slowly start looking for other Automation Opportunities as your Business grow day by day. Then you’ll be spending more and more time on the areas of your business that matter most to you.
