Technology has slowly integrated itself into almost every facet of our lives. We are beginning to recognize automation as the norm. Self-driving cars are taking up the road. Groceries can be ordered and delivered from the comfort of your home. You can control smart appliances from your phone.
Automation technology simplifies your personal life and should extend to your business too. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of online office management software in the UK that can help you automate repetitive or routine tasks, from sales and marketing to finance and project management.
In this post, luminablog.co.uk will be sharing eight reasons why you should automate your business.
Reduce the Amount of Time Spent on Administrative Tasks
Did you know that knowledge workers spend an average of 3.8 hours each day doing busy work? Many of these tasks are repetitive and could be eliminated with more streamlined and automated workflows.
For example, most managers, people ops, and finance teams spend a ton of time approving everything from new software purchases to invoices and time-off requests. Instead of dealing with these requests as one-off Slack and email messages that also need to be logged in various business applications, you can use a combination of software or automated workflows to manage the entire process.
Minimize Human Errors
Manually entering data increases the chance of errors. Plus, it’s time-consuming. Establishing automated data management and accounting processes can ensure your information is correct. Automation can also help ensure confidential data is secure.
Improve Customer Satisfaction
From self-service tools and chatbots to partially automated customer onboarding workflows and automated NPS surveys, automation can help you support your customers at any time regardless of time zone.
Scale Your Business
Streamlining your workflows and eliminating excess time spent on repetitive tasks frees you and your employees to work on creative tasks that can help you scale your business faster.
For example, if your sales team is no longer spending a couple of hours per day wrangling your CRM and doing data entry, that’s two more hours they could be spending prospecting, making sales calls, and closing more deals.
Save Time
An automated process removes repetitive, time-consuming tasks from your employees’ schedules.
For example, finding a time when everyone can meet for a call often results in a chain of emails. Instead of the time-consuming process of replying to these emails, use scheduling software to eliminate back-and-forth replies. Most scheduling tools also include automated reminders, which reduce the risk of no-shows.
Be More Consistent with Your Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing can be time-consuming. Your business needs to create content regularly, monitor the channels, and respond to comments.
Fortunately, you can automate some of these tasks — like scheduling posts — to reduce how much time you’re spending on social media without sacrificing quality.
Save Money
As we alluded to earlier, the average knowledge worker spends several hours each day on busy work. That is not only lost time but lost money. Effective automation can reduce busy work, minimize the cost of your operations, and lead to increased profit margins.
For example, one simple way to get started is to use project management software. This allows you to track progress, assign tasks to key stakeholders, set deadlines, and make it easy to communicate with your team in one place instead of through long email and Slack threads.
Increase Employee Morale
Automation can minimize tedious, repetitive tasks so your employees can focus on the work they enjoy. Automation can also speed up processes and check-ins with supervisors, saving them time. As a result, employees can feel more empowered and in control of their time, leading to increased morale.