The Importance of Adopting Automation in Your Business

business automation

Are you a CEO running a small to medium business and are looking to improve efficiency and productivity? Then chances are, you have already thought about and have considered business automation.

If you are unsure of how to discover if automating your business is right for you or perhaps you are undecided on which area of the business to introduce this new process into, we can help.

Sharing insight and information, along with answering any questions that you may have about business automation, we will also cover the areas that you should consider automating first.

What Is Business Automation?

Business automation is the process of using technology to set up and automate the completion of recurring tasks. Tasks that you can automate through the development of industry-leading rackmount servers are often introduced to help lower costs, increase efficiency, and streamline processes so that energy and resources can be spent completing more beneficial tasks. 

We experience evidence of automation daily within our lives. From the confirmation email we receive when we complete our online order on an eCommerce site, to the reminders about renewing our car insurance. A simple procedure that allows a company to run to the fullest without minimal human input. 

With many different areas in which businesses, large or small, can begin to incorporate business automation into the operations of their company, keep reading to discover the common areas where this introduction of automation can prove beneficial.

Departments That Could Benefit From Business Automation

If you are considering the addition of business automation into your business, and your organization features one of these departments, then you will be pleased to note that this feature will be a beneficial addition.

Marketing 

Marketing automation is a prime example of how automation can be used and harnessed to the fullest. Automating reminder emails to revisit an abandoned shopping basket, confirm an order, even automating paid search adverts. The power of incorporating marketing automation in your business is paramount and can be seen in nearly 80% of all top-performing companies having already incorporated business automation into their organization. 

 In the US, the marketing automation industry keeps on growing by 30 percent every year. 49 percent of companies are now doing marketing automation and 55 percent of B2B companies have already adopted the technology.

As for the sales productivity, 14.5 percent increase was driven by  marketing automation and reduction in marketing overhead by 12.2 percent. 

Marketing automation is not just for the big leads and the giants, but for small businesses too. By taking the time to automate small, repetitive tasks, you can use and devote such time to conducting much more important tasks apart from marketing. 

Leads

Can you automate finding new customers? Sure you can. Through the addition of business automation, you can find new clients while quickly responding to already engaged leads, for quicker and effortless retention. 

How can automation be used to find new leads? If your site has a ‘contact us’ page, through the use of automation software, this software can automatically respond to emails, even send notifications to the senders that they will receive a response shortly to their request. 

This speedy response via automated emails can lead to a higher conversion rate.  These leads can also be captured through the automated email follow up of new contacts that you have recently been introduced to at a conferencing event, or perhaps the details obtained through the required signup on a valuable content on your site. 

Sales

If your business falls within the sales industry or you have a successful sales department, then you will be pleased to note that business automation can be included in these fields.

For businesses with a team of sales representatives on the road, the use of automation could be used to help speed up and map the route for the day. Automating this process can help in putting together a destination map to ensure that they safely arrive at their intended destinations on time.

Along with the planning of their journey to conduct sales, automation can also be incorporated as a step-by-step process to ensure all areas of the transaction are being completed. 

From finding a new opportunity and contacting that opportunity to engaging before qualifying, and completing this lead, you can rely on automation.

The addition of business automation into the sales process could also be beneficial and valuable by being able to highlight those most engaged and more likely to complete a certain transaction. This allows the sales reps to focus on the most convertible opportunities.

eCommerce 

A powerful addition, automation within eCommerce is enticing and can influence customers to return to their shop to buy time after time. Whether as a reminder to go back to their shopping cart and complete their checkout, research has found that by automating their eCommerce stores, businesses could see a rise of 60-70% in sales primarily through returning customers. 

Instead of waiting for customers to remember you and revisit your site, you can use automated prompts to remind them of the order that they have yet to complete or of a related product they might be interested of purchasing as well.

When sending automated emails to remind a lead to complete their initial order or reorder a product, place a simple link or an eye-catching call to action. Most of the time, this leads the customer to click and complete their order with much ease.

Customer Service

From the previous examples of how automation can be incorporated into your company, it may appear that automation can be used simply to discover new leads and help convert customers into returning and loyal ones. This is not entirely the case. Business automation can also be used for the benefit of your clients. In fact, having better customer service makes 86 percent of customers pay more. So if you are known for having good customer service then you can use it to charge more.

Through the addition of automated services and requests, you can improve customer experience and help speed up the process of finding the solutions and answers to the client queries. This addition can help offer a quicker, more thorough, and recommended customer service that as a business you can be proud of. And based on estimates, by the year 2020, 85 percent of customer service interactions will be automated. Chatbots are even becoming more popular as a survey says that 30 percent of respondents find chatbot interactions as “very effective” in dealing with issues regarding customer service. 

Among the processes you can automate include the following: sending an automated email in response to a general query, forwarding a query to the right person, and ensuring that the right course of action is documented. 

Events

Are you a business that runs and organizes events for its customers? If so, then you will be pleased to note that automation can be incorporated into events planning and organizing.

Through incorporating automation, you can help plan and prepare your events with minimal effort on your end. This includes adding attendees to the event list, sending reminders to customers about upcoming ticket sales dates. 

Social media sites such as Facebook allows businesses to share the event and send reminders to those attendees who have shown an interest or have marked that they will be attending the event. 

Office Management

Lastly, you can also incorporate automation into your office management. From handling paperwork and conducting the job application process, to even completing a repetitive list of daily tasks, business automation could prove to be a valuable tool.

This can be usually seen in the advertising and sorting of job applications for an available role, or sending and receiving important documents. Instead of manually sending invoices and reminders to clients, you can instead schedule the action and set it up for the software of your choice to complete. Many software programmes are even able to chase and send follow-ups for unpaid invoices.  

Conclusion

When it comes to running an efficient, smooth, and reliable business, being proactive is highly recommended. Instead of waiting for the leads to come your way, go out there with less effort but wider reach. With the use of the latest technology and software, you can ensure that you are running your business to the fullest by finding and converting your leads.

We have taken a sneak peek at how automation can be used for businesses that are working in eCommerce, sales, and customer service, but these are only examples.

By automating your business operations and processes, you can take advantage of many opportunities to expand and develop your business and you can focus your time on other aspects of your company. 

We would love to hear from you! Have you seen a rise in productivity and efficiency since the inclusion of automation in your business?

Author bio 

Charlotte Johnson is from the sunny south of England and is an experienced copywriter and editor at Business Services Week.

With experience working within the business industry, whether it’s marketing related, SEO to the next must-have technology, there is little that Charlotte cannot write about.

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