Automating administrative tasks allows you to focus more on business-critical objectives developed to grow your operations. The abundance of available business software has made these solutions accessible even for smaller enterprises. This means everyone can make admin life easier as they lean more toward a growth mindset and automate their business to be more agile and efficient.
How automation can help your business grow
Before jumping on any platform, auditing your existing business processes is necessary. Where do bottlenecks usually occur? Which areas can benefit customers most when automated? When you have concrete answers to these questions, you can start prioritizing which processes to automate. With that said, here are a few business processes you can look to automate.
Automated job orders
If you’re in the field service industry, there are business tech platforms that provide a comprehensive suite of solutions. For example, an electrician business software can handle automated job order processing, allowing customers to provide all the necessary information. This centralizes all relevant customer and job details, reducing administrative tasks.
This system also has multiple integrations. For example, customers can receive an automated quote via SMS after booking a job order online. You can add a link to the SMS where they can approve the quote and settle any deposits required. Once approved, the system can schedule the job or dispatch a service person. Should customers fail to confirm after a set period, the system can send automated follow-ups.
This system of layered automation provides business owners with more opportunities to develop strategies to grow their enterprises and spend time with their families than doing admin work.
Mobile admin approval
You can run your business from anywhere when you have a comprehensive app with automated integrations. For instance, suppose you have a roofing business. You can develop an app that shows you all job orders the app scheduled automatically. All you need to do is approve them. You can also make adjustments based on crew availability.
You can also let your crew update job orders via the app, sending an automated invoice to customers. The system would also log in employee hours and notify them of upcoming jobs. This type of business software enables you to accept (and finish) more projects, boosting your business with efficiency.
Customer service workflow
Customer service is where you and your customers can benefit the most when you automate your processes. For example, an automated system can get an inquiry via a chatbot on messaging apps such as Messenger. By providing appropriate options, the system can direct customers to content answering their concerns or to the appropriate department. This can free up staff to focus on more technical matters while providing customers with a self-service portal.
Automated customer service platforms can also analyze the concerns and queries you’re getting. These provide insights into how you can better serve your customers and what tools you can use to enhance your communication channels.
This is an example of how you can use automation other than an end-to-end solution. As opposed to hyper-automation, hybrid workflows combine automation and let a human finish the task when necessary. You can also apply this to the hiring process, where a tool screens applications automatically so when it reaches the HR manager, the pool is already narrowed down to the most qualified applicants
Bookkeeping and accounting
You can’t talk about boring stuff without mentioning bookkeeping and accounting. Despite how menial accounting might seem, this is also where you don’t want to make any mistakes. Fortunately, platforms and managed services can generate accurate and up-to-date books for you at each month’s end. You can also integrate this with receipt storage software that keeps track of your financial documents, making them easy to monitor and pull up whenever you need them.
Additionally, if you’re conducting business across states, you know how cumbersome it can be to deal with different state taxes and varying regulations. You can also integrate specialized systems with your website to monitor sales, producing the requisite documents for tax filing.
Onboarding and training
For smaller enterprises, onboarding usually requires staff to take time out of their week to help new hires get up to speed with business processes. You can minimize the time needed to monitor new hires with onboarding and training platforms. These systems can automate training manuals, track progress, and ease new employees into your operations.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is beneficial if your business maintains a presence on multiple social platforms. Apart from scheduling posts, social automation tools can handle basic customer service, provide templates for posts, and produce analytics reports. This can be an excellent time-saving tool if your industry requires an active social media presence.
Finding employees feeling threatened by new technologies is common to many businesses. Despite the proliferation of automation, it still carries the stigma that it’s out to steal human jobs. Of course, once team members experience the many benefits of automation, the resistance stops.
However, communicating the reasoning behind the adoption from the onset to your team is a must. That way, you have a more seamless technology integration. Transparency to your team leads to an efficient hybrid workflow aligned across the entire organization.
