automating business tasks to boost productivity

TechsPlace | Running an organization is often a labour of love because it is time-consuming and exhausting. Team leaders and owners usually wear many hats and take on more than their fair share of the workload as they try to make sure the company is as successful as it can be. However, overworking yourself can quickly lead to burnout, which then leads to errors and additional work for everyone involved.

Automating tasks and processes simplifies day-to-day business operations and, in many instances, saves companies money. For organizations, the business automation can feel like another part of the team when done properly because it takes a little bit off each employee’s plate. This keeps everyone happy and ensures your business runs as smoothly as possible.

Thanks to modern technology, automating business tasks has never been easier. In fact, your business can start task business automation today in these seven areas.

 

1. Customer Service

All businesses engage in some form of customer service. However, delivering poor or even subpar support to potential customers can cost you the sale. As many as six out of every 10 customers will take their business elsewhere if they experience issues when they reach out to a company for help.

For organizations, managing customer inquiries and concerns can be challenging to manage. This becomes even more of an issue if you have places for customers to contact you through your website, email, and social media. However, there is business automation you can run to make this task a little easier.

Many companies use chatbots to provide instantaneous responses to common customer concerns or answer messages after business hours. Additionally, tools like ticket routing optimizers can quickly distribute electronic messages to the appropriate person on your support or sales team so they are handled promptly.

By automating your customer service, you can receive higher satisfaction ratings and maximize your business growth. Then, as you add more employees to your team, you can look for ways to use the customer service automation you already have in place alongside your strong team members to take your service to the next level.

 

2. Email Marketing

Nearly every business uses email marking because it is one of the most profitable digital marketing tools. Unfortunately, email marketing can become a highly time-intensive process, especially if you are manually sending out the messages or responding to everyone yourself. What’s more, your marketing campaigns may not return the results you’re looking for if you aren’t automating the process.

When you use automation tools for email marketing, you essentially put each lead you’ve generated into a personalized funnel based on the demographic information you collected. This information helps your automation system place each customer into the correct segment so they receive personalized messages that meet them where they are. This increases the success rate of your email efforts while also taking yet another time-consuming task off of your shoulders.

Email marketing also works well if you are using it alongside other popular email marketing strategies like lead magnet drip campaigns or free webinars with a call-to-action series following them.

 

3. User Provisioning

Provisioning is the process businesses use to set up their technological infrastructure.  This includes everything from programming servers to enrolling new employees into all of the various software a company uses.

Because of things like employee turnover, business growth, and vendor changes, user provisioning is the most frequent form of provisioning. User provisioning can be done manually, but that’s time-consuming and tedious. Instead, organizations should work towards automating their user provisioning.

When companies use auto-provisioning, the lifecycle management process operates smoothly. Automating your user provisioning can help your business grant, modify, or revoke access to all of your software systems within a matter of hours instead of days. Furthermore, most auto provisioning solutions are designed to easily connect with all of your existing technology — even if you just use an Excel spreadsheet and Office 365.

In more elaborate cases, auto-provisioning can help ensure that each employee and contractor receives the correct permissions within each type of software your company uses. Auto-provisioning can even generate login information, enrol new hires into your payroll system, and remove permissions for users immediately upon the end of their employment contract.

 

4. Finances

Just like auto-provisioning, automating your business finances can save you time and make your company’s internal workings operate seamlessly. You can automate many aspects of your finances, such as invoicing, payroll, and data verification. The more you automate, the easier it is to spot errors and keep up with documentation.

Furthermore, financial automation works for businesses with salaried employees as well as contractors who submit invoices. In many cases, you can even select payroll systems that accept all of these entries, making it easy for you to simply look over and approve expenses as needed.

When you automate your finances, you will also find that it makes it easier to retrieve data at a later time. This can be helpful during tax season or if you apply for an organizational loan to fund expansion efforts.

 

5. Social Media

Social media can be a headache for organizations to manage. Every platform has its post and image requirements, and you may not want to reuse the same content or share it at the same time across all platforms. Furthermore, no one has time to sit around and make sure they post content at exactly the right time every single day.

Thankfully, you can automate many social media tasks to make the daunting task of managing Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok easier for your team. You use business automation tools to schedule your posts, perform routine tasks, answer comments or direct messages, and even analyze post data to determine which campaigns are the most successful.

By automating these tasks, your social media team will have more time to plan and create the content that the automation tool is posting. This gives you the best possible content, posted at optimum times to maximize your social media efforts.

 

6. File Management and Backup

Nearly every segment of modern businesses is digital these days. However, digital files can quickly become lost, corrupted, or accidentally deleted if employees are not careful. Losing any valuable data can be devastating, but this can be a literal disaster for a business. For this reason, it is important to have an efficient file management system in place that automatically backs up files.

File management through a cloud storage system or a private server makes it easy for employees to collaborate, share assets, and locate files as needed. This can be especially important for organizations with teams who work remotely or if you work with any freelance or contract employees who may not have a company-issued computer.

Furthermore, automatic backups ensure no data is lost if a system crashes or a hard drive becomes corrupted. You can program these automatic backups to happen as often as you’d like, even multiple times per day. You can even have your employees use a system like Dropbox or Google Drive to sync all of their files in real time so no work is lost.

 

7. Workflows

Whether you have three employees or thirty, you probably have workflows that you follow for each project you complete. Using project management tools helps you manage these workflows and keep tabs on individual workloads. However, if you are entering all of the data and assigning tasks manually, it can eat into your time each day.

When you automate these tasks, however, it streamlines the process and makes it easier for everyone. Automated workflows can make it easier for team members to track progress, view workloads ahead of time, and communicate issues well before a missed deadline. This business automation can also make it easier for everyone to receive reminders about pending tasks and see the big picture for each project instead of just their role.

There are many great tools out there to help you automate your workflows. You can simply choose one that best connects with your already-established productivity tools or manually program your project management software to do this work for you.

 

What Will Business Automation Help You Accomplish?

Operating an organization doesn’t have to be stressful or all-encompassing. You need to utilize the team members you have and take advantage of technology to help you automate tasks and fill in the gaps.

You may think that automating tasks sounds like an overwhelming process, but it’s not. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or even a computer programmer to automate the tasks mentioned above. All you need is a few hours of free time and access to some great online tools.

Whether you decide to start small with automating your email marketing or go big and tackle everything on this list, you’ll finally find a moment to catch your breath as you sit back and let technology work for you. After all, they say to work smarter, not harder — and that’s exactly why task automation exists.