There have been a lot of evolutions globally in the way things are done, and the business world is not left out. The business world has moved from just re-engineering processes to automation. This does not only guarantee that quality products and services are consistently made available to customers, it also give you the room to focus on strategic expansion.
The competition in the business world is getting tighter. There is need for business owners to adopt strategies that will continually enhance their business growth. One smart strategy is automation.
Now, automation is really not only about employing high end technologies that are capable of cracking complex algorithms. But an application of eliminating manual processes using simple automation software.
The more manual operations you eliminate from your business workflow, the more money and time you save, as well as ease your stress. This is because study shows that leaders in business experience higher levels of stress than most people, and it is therefore not that surprising that people in this field have a higher prevalence of substance abuse than people working on other fields.
Here are a few processes that you really have to automate, if you have not done so already.
1. Marketing
This has to do with optimization of your marketing strategies and applying marketing technologies to better reach out to customers. When a business starts to grow, it’s impossible to maintain one-on-one relationships with customers and clients. If you are still using just Excel sheets and reaching out to customers manually, you seriously need to reassess your marketing process. Your business deserves a high level of marketing efficiency, especially if you want to expand.
Frankly, global digitalization has helped a lot of businesses reach out to customers all over the world and marketing strategies have upped by multiple times as compared to what was obtainable some years back.
Really, automation of your marketing strategies does not take much to do. Just pick out marketing activities for automation by identifying repetitive tasks, especially those that need data or specific logic to run effectively.
2. Sales
Have you ever wondered the amount of time your sales reps have to spend searching for leads, initiating contacts, going back and manually doing it all over again? The truth is that sales reps can reach more leads if the sales processes are automated.
The repetitive tasks of keeping in touch with your customers and clients eat up a lot of time. For instance, when sales reps want to close a deal, they will have to make contacts on an average of 8 times. If the calling processes that sales reps need are not automated, it will be difficult to close most deals.
This can hamper the growth process of your business. By simply implementing automated dialing, your sales reps do not have to manually input phone numbers key by key. Calls would just be a click away.
3. Purchasing
All businesses, especially small businesses have basically two purchase processes; purchase request and purchase order. Both of them can be very tedious and time consuming if they are done manually. Imagine haven to follow up piles and piles of paperwork manually. It’s really strenuous and completely avoidable.
Let assume there is a purchase request that really requires your attention and authorization, and you are indisposed for some reason. Do you have to jump on the next flight just to attend to that? Or does it have to wait on your desk till you are back? This will really rob your business of valuable time.
Cloud automation for purchase requisitions makes it easier for your business to raise purchase requests from anywhere in the world. The only requirement is possession of a device with internet accessibility, which could be a personal computer, smartphone or tablet.
Automating your purchase request speeds up the process as it gives all parties involved instant access to any request in the cloud system. These automated systems can help you get immediate reports, as well as allowing you to track, monitor and analyze the costs of your business anytime and anywhere.
4. Employee Onboarding
A business is as good as its employees. This is why a business will constantly and continuously go through employee recruitment. However, it is one thing to hire employees and it is another to get them to fit into the ideology of the organization.
Usually, companies invest time and resources to orientate fresh employees and get them to align with the social and professional pattern of the company. This process helps the new intakes learn the attitudes, knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed to work effectively within the organization.
Automating this process takes away all the form fillings and manual orientations hence making the process faster and more effective. The resources saved could be channeled to more productive ventures that will help expand your business. Workforce management software like Advance Systems assist in eliminating manual processes and ensuring proper tracking of employees for an effective work environment.
5. Metrics Computation and Analysis
Numbers are very essential in tracking the progress of your business. Be it sales performance, marketing trends or any other relevant data, you need the numbers.
However, jumping from one website to another just to compute and analyze data can be both time consuming and resource draining. Automating your metrics and having them come to you in one click will do your business a whole lot of good.
The competition in the business world is so high that you cannot afford to waste resources and time doing things that would have taken less when automated. You need as much time, as well as your employees, to strategize business growth and expansion. Automation is the thing to do if you must attain your expansion goals.
Richard Agu is a researcher, entrepreneur and freelancer, passionate about entrepreneurship and self-development. Currently, Richard writes for Entrepreneur.com, Goodmenproject.com, among others. Follow him on Linkedin.com by clicking here now.