Different types of business process automation are rapidly evolving many businesses today to help achieve better workflow. They help create time for more important tasks, simplify processes and improves customer service and profits among other factors.
With technology improving at an exceptional rate automating your business has become essential for a lot of industries. These include media, financial, construction and retail industries to name a few. The demand on such companies is huge so it makes sense to automate processes where possible to ensure customer’s needs are being met while the business’s workforce stays on track.
To achieve this there are many types of business process automation that can be implemented within a business to help it function better, improve workflow and services overall. This helps the business create opportunities for growth while also expanding the bottom line for a more profitable outcome. Below you will see some types of automated business solutions that are beneficial to small businesses and larger companies alike.
Onboarding Automation
Hiring employees and managing them can be a very time consuming process. It takes effort to try and find the right people for the job, let alone training and on boarding processes to get them up to speed. This is where employment automation can come in handy, especially for larger companies.
Human Resource Information Systems or (HRIS) for short are programs that automate various onboarding tasks for your HR team. It helps them manage information, documents and meetings between new recruits and themselves to minimise the workload and time it takes to search and hire new prospects.
In conjunction with this, digital contract software and forms can be very beneficial. It allows you to have the forms and contracts filled out online and signed digitally by your new hire. It also cuts down on paperwork and processing for the HR team so they can make the whole process smoother and faster.
Using Learning Management Software (LMS) is a great way to automate the onboarding process by virtually teaching your new recruits. LMS allows you to upload videos and programs to a central database that your new employees can access to help train them faster and without taking other team members away from their positions saving everyone time.
Financial Automation
Finances can be classified under two groups in business. The accounting department and the financial department. Each has its own role but a lot of tasks involving money have been known to be time consuming and laborious in the past.
Now with the implementation of technology, business finances can be automated to some degree which helps ease the strain on employees and the employer as well. The accounting department, for example, doesn’t have to enter every piece of data manually anymore. On the other hand the finances department can quickly create graphs and diagrams from the system’s data to easily show where money is being sent and received from.
Financial automation software also allows multiple departments to see a live feed of the financial state of a business. This can help with increasing revenue in areas that need it, paying accounts and processing other financial tasks faster and more efficiently.
The data that is processed through this software is also more reliable and consistent as there is less human error involved in the management of finances. This, in turn, allows those in charge of the business’s finances to analyse and create more opportunities for profit than spending time maintaining the current financial system.
Scheduling Automation
Scheduling automation is another of the many types of business process automation that can be used for yourself and your employees to ensure that your business has staff at all times. It can also be used to manage your calendar to ensure that you complete all your projects in a timely manner while reminding you of important meetings and events.
In either case, automated scheduling is a great time saver and ensures everyone is on the same page. All you have to do when something changes is to adjust the schedule. Otherwise you can set your automated schedule to repeat itself so that Matt can work from 8am to 12pm every Tuesday, etc.
Automated scheduling reduces the risk of an overlap of staff or staff turning up on the wrong day. This also drastically reduces overtime rates and saves the business money. It can also increase profit margins if you have more experienced staff scheduled for busier hours of the day. This then reduces stress on yourself as the employer and on your staff because they know precisely who is working and when.
Sales Process Automation
Tracking sales and prospective clients can be a time consuming job where lots of mistakes can happen. Clients can be forgotten in favour of others, calls missed, follow ups cancelled, etc. Sales process automation is a great way to reduce these errors while increasing profits on a regular basis.
The most common form of sales process automation in business is Customer Relationship Management software or CRM for short. This type of software allows you to automatically prioritise certain leads over others, sends reminders about calls and appointments with customers and so much more.
These types of business process automation software can also be used remotely on tablets, laptops or mobiles making it easy for you or your employees to enter live data or bring up customer details on site. It also helps with customer retention, improves customer experience and boosts profits considerably with minimal effort. So why wouldn’t you improve your business with sales process automation software?!
Marketing Automation
Marketing is an important part of business because if you have a product but no one knows about it how are you going to make money? Most businesses pay someone to market for them or have an in house marketing team but even then the processes involved can be time consuming.
Marketing automation is great for saving time and increasing customer engagement and customer retention. You can do this with multiple tools including:
.social media scheduling for sending out posts
.sms and email marketing automation
.sending retargeted messages to increase the chances of a sale
There are many other tools you can use to automate your marketing processes as well. However, the number one thing to keep in mind is quality of service. Customers want to be cared for and feel like they are having a great experience so if your marketing is all about you the customer is not going to buy!
Customer Service Automation
Customer service is HUGE in business. If your customers aren’t happy why would they buy your product or refer you? That’s why good businesses bring their A game to the customer service department. However, providing excellent customer service is not an easy feat to achieve.
With so many customers across the globe these days businesses have had to get creative with their customer service efforts. Automating certain processes pertaining to customer service is one way that companies have been able to keep up and provide a quality experience to their clients.
Chatbots are one way of automating customer service for easy to answer questions so that customers can quickly solve their own problems if it is simple enough. However, it is important to still have staff available to discuss more complex queries instead of leaving your customers to fend for themselves. It’s a win, win situation which allows you to save time but also gives the customer a good experience all the same.
Another form of customer service automation includes providing recommendations when they add something to their cart. For example, if they purchase a phone on your website you could automatically recommend some phone cases that match that model and upsell to the customer. This would increase your sales and provide your customer with a nice experience.
Task Automation
Every business has simple and mundane tasks that need to be processed in order for the company to run. However, these tasks don’t make money for the business and take up time, yet they have to be done. So you either get your staff to waste their time doing it, which is costly, or you automate the task at hand.
You can automate a LOT of simple tasks these days with the technology that’s available. Some of these might include:
.data entry
.payroll processing
.file backups
.scheduling
.repetitive tasks
.creating forms
.paying bills
All of these tasks might seem small but all together can take up a lot of time. Especially if you are a small business and doing it all on your own. Automating these types of tasks can reduce your stress as an entrepreneur while allowing you to focus on the more important aspects of your business.
Dispatch Automation
The most important task at hand after you make the sale is the dispatch of your product. Your customer needs to receive it after all! Dispatch processes can be timely and a lot of mistakes can be made if there is a lack of communication between the sales team and distributors in the warehouse.
Dispatch automation can be vital to businesses to help reduce order errors, improve time management and streamline processes. For example, a customer orders a book. The order needs to go to the dispatch centre so that the warehouse team can pick the item. Once picked it needs to be packaged and sent out via a courier.
To start with you could automate your system so that the orders print out direct to the warehouse so the product can be picked. You could then create a process that automatically updates the customer when the order has been packaged and is then shipped. This not only creates better service for your customer but streamlines processes on your end. It can also be handy if something goes wrong and you need to look back through your records to find out where the product was before it went missing or got delayed.
Can I automate processes in my business?
Of course! There are many ways to automate processes in any business. You just need to figure out what steps you need to take to complete a task or process and find an automated solution for it. There are many forms of software that cater to the different types of business process automation discussed here and much more.
However, you can’t automate everything! There are just some things that need that human touch. These are either too important to just be left to machines or are too complex to be automated at this stage. Despite that, if you can incorporate automated business processes into your business and save yourself some time and money you are already winning!
