With the looming impact of the pandemic and so much economic uncertainty, many business owners are looking for ways to lower costs and gain more stability. Automation is one such tool that can give you the efficiency and flexibility you need. While automation was at one point a new concept for businesses, it is much more commonplace today. There are, in fact, five processes every business can automate.
Customer Service
At the core of any successful business is good customer service. As such, customer service may seem like something you shouldn’t automate. While that is true for some components of providing customers with service and support, certain elements of your customer service model can indeed be automated to increase efficiency. For example, while certain customer issues may be unique, many may not be. As such, solving common customer issues can be automated through the use of solutions like chatbots. This will benefit customers by answering the most common questions they have automatically instead of forcing them to wait in a queue for service. As a result, less pressure will be put on your customer service representatives so they can focus more effort on dealing with customers that do have unique problems after they are forwarded to them when the chatbot fails to solve their issue.
Inventory Management
Another business process that nearly any company can automate is inventory management. Inventory management, of course, is extremely important. If you overstock your inventory, you may end up losing a lot of money to spoilage or unsold products. If you understock your inventory, you will face the opposite problem. You will lose out on sales you could have made if you did not run out of stock. Completing inventory management by hand is a cumbersome, sluggish, and inefficient process. Instead, partner with a company to automate the process. For example, the services for inventory tracking by Lowry Solutions can collate data from suppliers, customers, sales histories, and more to better forecast what inventory will be needed when. Lowry can help you better understand asset inventory management vs asset tracking so you can decide the best option for your business.
Employee Scheduling
Another business process that may take up a lot of time for management is employee scheduling. Determining who to schedule for when and for how long is more of a mathematical process than anything else. As such, it is one of the easier things for a company of any size to automate with the assistance of scheduling software. This software can help to optimize your employees’ hours while adhering to labor laws and other guidelines. This can be especially helpful if you employ a lot of part-timers. With the assistance of the software, developing work schedules will be less like solving a puzzle every week.
Invoicing
Another business process that should be automated is invoicing. This can include both internal invoicing for the financial workings of your company as well as invoicing for customers. Automating invoicing can have many great benefits. For one, it can greatly decrease the turnaround time for making payments than would be the case if invoicing had to be performed manually. The software can even be used to automatically remind customers to pay their bills. You’ll also receive accurate and real-time financial reporting and more seamless integration with your accounting software.
Sales
Lastly, another process every business should try to automate is sales. Sales is another process that sounds like it cannot be automated. However, 75 percent of companies use some kind of marketing automation. Many companies have been using automation for quite some time now for completing tasks like lead generation. Inbound leads can be automatically assigned to a specific salesperson. Follow-up emails or phone calls can be sent in a lightning-quick fashion. All relevant data will be recorded, and you’ll be able to seal the deal more easily with automated reminders to call back to a potential lead that could not be contacted at first. The conversion rate of transforming leads into sales will be greatly increased as a result.
Overall, automation is an amazing tool for businesses owners to yield. It can increase the efficiency of your business processes and decrease the rate of failure. While certain things require the human touch, software can certainly speed up the process of what can be accomplished by a business with limited manpower. Consider the five options above as well as others for integrating automation into your company.