With the high level of competition in the business niche, you’ll definitely want to stay ahead of your competitors by enabling business task automation. And that would mean, you streamline your business operations from hiring and onboarding your employees to offering the best services to boost your customers’ satisfaction rates.
However, you can never achieve your business goals or complete efficiency if you haven’t understood the differences of the business of your task. In other words, for efficiency and productivity, your business has some critical and menial tasks which must be prioritized and managed quickly. And that is where automation comes in to help you free more time and streamline your workflow processes.
Thankfully, we’ll take you through more of the tasks you should automate. But first, you need to know what business automation is, plus some of the benefits you intend to gain through automation.
Understanding business task automation
Business automation is using technology to replace business manual operations systematically. In other words, it involves applying technology in the execution of recurring tasks in business.
Why would you want to automate your tasks business?
Several reasons come along with automating your business operations. Here are a few that may make you want to use technology in your daily business activities.
Saves you time by streamlining your processes
Most business owners would take more time undertaking tasks than they spend concentrating on their business goals. Therefore, you must take advantage of technology and automate some of your operations, like employee onboarding and accounts payable. Automation ensures you accelerate how you do your work and prepares your business for faster growth.
Automation reduces the operational costs
What happens when you can’t meet your deadlines? Of course, you may have staff working on a specific task business. But to reduce the cost of labor and time spent of specific tasks, you can always turn to automation and the use of machines.
Modern tools and technologies like Applicant Tracking System or Recruitment Management software help optimise hiring and get top talent onboard.
Automation increases availability and reliability
I’m tempted to ask how often you rely on your smartphone or computer. But, it would be better to say most of us greatly depend on these technologies for different reasons. Mostly, it would be that they provide quick and easy access to whatever we need. The same applies to your business.
Let’s face it; most businesses would be running on paper documents. Meaning there would be a trail of papers within the offices. How hard do you think it can get to look for a single document? However, with the right technology comes automation, which increases the availability of saved documents. And thus a more reliable way of accessing your information.
In addition to the above reasons, automation ensures an established connection between you and your customers, centralized communication, and provides accountability, among others.
Now, let’s delve into the real show!
Tasks business owners should automate
You’ll know you can’t handle most tasks business if you can’t find some documents in time to meet your deadlines. Also, when your business isn’t getting targeted production or when your customers are not satisfied. However, all these would be in your past if you can automate the following tasks.
Document management tasks
Every day as a business, you’ll have to generate, capture, or even store documents such as business customer data, letters, or product specifications. The question is, in what form are you storing the documents?
I don’t know if your case, but most business owners are buried in paperwork daily. Sometimes the documents are too many that you lack their storage, and since you may not know when you can use them, it becomes hard for lengthy storage.
How can automation help in document management?
The good news is, there is a technology like cloud-based file storage that would allow you to automate your storage and facilitates easy access to these documents whenever you need them.
Similarly, automation of documents would mean efficient data processing, which implies that your document workflow would be triggered automatically, anywhere, any time access. How cool? But, first, you must ensure you decide to move into the paperless tasks business.
But, how do you move to a paperless system?
- You have to ensure you scan all your documents
- Embrace electronic signatures
- Implement paperless billing
- It would help if you encouraged all of your employees to take digital notes
- Work to eliminate fax by encouraging emails
Recruiting and hiring tasks
Recruiting new hires into your business can prove to be tedious work of identifying a vacancy, advertising the post, analyzing and reviewing applications. Also, selecting candidates, not to mention conducting interviews. Imagine if all these processes are done manually. It would be cumbersome, right? That’s why you must ensure you automate these processes.
I’m pretty sure automating the recruitment process would save much time and increase your productivity. Also, it will reduce your time of reading and filling paper applications and lower cost per hire, among other benefits.
Here are some advantages of recruitment automation technologies:
Candidate sourcing and engagement
Technologies that leverage artificial intelligence automation will help identify and engage candidates. The recruitment automation software can analyze candidates’ skills and experience to the requirements provided. If their skills don’t match the job applied for, then there is no follow-up.
Automation and candidate screening
With technology like chatbox, which helps automate communication, you can know the candidates’ experience. This would, in turn, help you have a streamlined, consistent, and scalable interface for the candidate considering the opportunity.
Also, automation technologies would ensure smooth interview scheduling, assessment, and background checks, among other recruitment processes. These save both the recruiters and the candidates’ time.
Lead management tasks
How can you feel when every person you engage with your business turns to be your customer? Sometimes referred to as contact management, lead management is the process of tracking or managing prospective customers.
You can achieve lead management by creating or generating consumer interests in your products and services. Besides, it’s essential since it can help grow your business, especially when looking to bring in new customers or respond to prospective clients.
Therefore, you must automate your various marketing tactics like emails, social media, sales, and advertisements. This is how you benefit from automating lead management.
Take an example of social media; how many customers do you think are following your business from your social media pages? Many, of course, unless you haven’t created one.
However, when you need to lure many customers to your services, you must always be present and active to answers questions or provide clarifications to customers whenever they need them.
Also, ensure you automate your email responses. Let your clients know immediately you get concerns. Providing immediate help would mean a good customer relationship. Nothing your customers would value more than the emotional feeling that you always care for their needs.
Financial tasks
If there is a department you can never fail to take care of is your business finance. Of course, managing finances can be daunting, especially when you have piled receipts and invoices. However, when there is automation, you don’t have to be in the office all the time to handle invoices or recording expenses.
You can always ensure consistent and accurate invoicing through the use of an online invoice generator. It will help you keep track of all the paid and unpaid invoices.
Also, invoice reminders such as Freshbooks will allow you to create automated email reminders to customers owing you. With such automation machines, there is less manual work by your financial staff, which opens up more time for other tasks business. Besides, they help ease financial and accounting stress, which ensures normal cash flow.
Internal business communication tasks
You can have so much business internal communication with your employees—talk of, information delivery, issuing directives, and requesting suggestions, among other communications strategies.
However, you can’t tell me you have a chance of doing a booming business if you still depend on the traditional model of communication -A channel where information was to trickle down from top management to lower-ranked employees. It certainly causes delays in the flow and loss of data.
However, automating your communication means you stand a chance to meeting the expectations of your employees. With the advancement in technology, no one likes to receive late information.
Therefore, with the automation of your internal communications, your employees are bound to frequent and timely updates on all the necessary details to help them perform their duties, among other benefits of effective business communication.
Conclusion
As a business owner, automating your business processes allows you to devote more of your time to growing your business and make everyday tasks business more efficient and productive. Here are a few tasks that you should automate for improved business operations. Automate your financial, lead management, communication, document management, and recruitment and hiring jobs.
