Benefits Of Automation: Turbocharge Your Small Business Growth

The last few years having seen more small business owners realising the tremendous benefits of automation and its power in accelerating small business growth.

In this article, we delve into some of the core ways business automation can help turbocharge small business growth.

But before we do that here are a few reasons we think automation can boost your small business growth.

4 Reasons To Embrace Automation For Small Business Growth

So, why should you consider automating your small business processes and tasks? Here are some compelling reasons:

1. Increased Productivity

Businesses could increase productivity by using software to perform repetitive tasks that are not customer-facing, such as employee recruitment.

Traditionally, the small business owner or an employee would have to create a job description for the vacant role, place an ad, review hundreds of applications and schedule interviews to fill out the role.

By leveraging tools that automatically scan hundreds of applications, a business can avoid errors, produce great results in less time, and free up the owner’s time.

2. Reduce Labour Costs

The more repetitive tasks your business generates, the more work your employees have to do.

The more your business grows or the more mundane tasks you need to handle, the more labour costs you have to pay.

With automation, instead of carrying out those activities by hand, you can use software that takes care of the repetitive processes and frees your employees to do other less mundane tasks.

3. Reduce Human Errors

Humans are bound to make errors when doing manual, repetitive activities.

That is why machinery is employed to produce various commodities because of their accuracy.

If your employees keep making errors while writing out orders or invoices, it is time for you to employ – a more reliable hand to handle that task, and incorporate automation.

4. Capacity to Scale

There are two ways to handle the need for more capacity in a growing business – you can either employ more hands to carry out various activities manually or utilise technology to meet increased demand.

How would you follow up with a thousand customers via email if you wanted to do so? Either you can write to each customer individually or you can send an email at once using software like Mailchimp.

I can bet that you would spend hours sending those emails and probably get tired before sending 200 emails if you take the first route.

But the second route is less stressful and is a more productive use of your time.

In this era of technological disruption, the choice is no longer between incorporating automation in business operations or not, it is about staying competitive and scaling or facing extinction.

Business owner using automation to save time

Benefits Of Automation: 3 Ways Automation Can Save Time

1. Customer Service

Many small business owners and their customer service representatives spend hours every day responding to customer emails, making and receiving calls, and attending to walk-in customers (for physical stores).

All this is important, but it is time-consuming.

And as the business expands, you would have to spend more money hiring employees to meet up or invest more of your time attending to customers.

Fortunately, there is an alternative.

To save your business time, small businesses can use business automation software and tools like chatbots, email responders, self-service portals, etc. to respond to customers efficiently.

This way, they can talk less to customers or spend less money hiring customer service representatives and still maintain effective communication with customers even as they grow.

2. Marketing

Business owners spend hours on marketing activities and tasks.

You spend hours researching content, creating or curating the content, fine-tuning campaigns, and distributing it.

Typically, this is a task that a small business owner could not execute alone.

Especially if they have to attend to other business tasks.

But thanks to automation, many small business owners can now run effective marketing campaigns with less effort and time.

Tools like Hootsuite, Facebook Manager, SendGrid, Canva, etc., have made it super easy to create and curate content, and schedule them months ahead across various email and social media platforms.

And get relevant insights into what is working and what is not quick.

3. Human Resource Management

Thanks to business automation tools, small business owners like you no longer need to spend hours reading through hundreds of CVs before choosing a few to schedule interviews with and onboard new hires.

You can take advantage of tools like the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to help you read CVs, and fish out the best people for your small business without spending precious time you could have invested more productively.

Many other tools, like payroll apps, are available to free up the time you spend manually paying salaries by performing it automatically.

Many small businesses spend hours correcting errors and mistakes.

The hours your employee spends searching for a file, correcting an invoice, or forgetting to make a payment can be better spent on other tasks that would bring in more money for your small business.

Related: Automate Your Small Business Like A Pro: 8 Essential Tips For Success

Benefits Of Automation: Streamlining Business Processes

Using automation to streamline your business processes is beneficial for many reasons. It simplifies your processes and removes unnecessary steps to minimise human errors, improve efficiency and productivity and save money.

Leveraging automation to streamline your business processes reduces the activities your employees have to complete. It frees up time spent on manual, repetitive tasks to give more quality time and effort to core business processes and activities that stimulate growth.

How exactly can you use automation to streamline your business processes:

1. Identify Processes That Need To Be Streamlined

The first step to using automation to streamline business processes is identifying tasks that need to be streamlined.

To do this, you need to assess your current processes and pick repetitive processes, such as data entry. Or that requires a lot of time and effort.

You should also be able to identify steps in your processes that are too complex, cause a lot of errors or are unnecessary and take appropriate actions.

2. Create A Plan

Once you have identified the tasks that can be automated, the next step is to create a plan of action.

One component of such a plan is your goals. For each process you have identified, you need to list the goals you want to achieve by using automation to streamline the process. It could be a shorter lead time, reduced efforts or saving money.

Whatever it is, make sure to set a S.M.A.R.T. goal.

Another part of your plan is to draft a standard operating procedure (SOP). This revised workflow of your processes should cut out unnecessary steps, simplify complex steps and apply automation (partially or fully) where steps are repetitive, require no creativity, etc.

Then prioritise a few processes you want to start with since you can not use automation to streamline all your processes at once.

3. Choose The Right Automation Tools

There are various business process automation tools to streamline your processes.

Some can be applied across processes, while others are tailored to specific aspects of your business operations like sales, making, bookkeeping, etc. The right automation tool must suit your budget, be scalable, and be reliable. It must be both effective and efficient in meeting your goals.

4. Review & Optimise Frequently

Using automation to streamline your processes is not a one-off task.

To ensure sustainability and maximum impact, it needs to be reviewed and optimised on a regular basis.

In addition, it can help identify potential problems before they become serious and ensure that the process runs smoothly.

Using automation to streamline business processes can be a great way to save time and resources. By taking the time to identify the tasks that can be automated, determining the best approach, and regularly reviewing the process, businesses can ensure that they’re getting the most out of their automation efforts.

3 Ways Automation Can Help Grow Your Small Business

Benefits Of Automation: 3 Ways Automation Can Help Grow Your Small Business

Small business owners are always looking for ways to grow their businesses, and automation can be a powerful tool to help them do just that.

Business automation can streamline processes, reduce costs, and ultimately drive small business growth.

Here are three ways your small business can leverage automation to achieve its growth objectives.

1. Automate Repetitive Tasks

One way to use automation to drive small business growth is to automate repetitive tasks. Doing so can free up time and resources to spend on other tasks.

Many small business owners and their employees get tied down doing routine tasks that do very little to grow their businesses. But these tasks are critical, so they have to perform them. And at the end of the day, you spend only minimal time on tasks that activate growth.

By automating such tasks you free up time and resources so you can spend more time on growth tasks. But it also improves accuracy and consistency, leading to improved customer experiences and better overall results.

2. Automate critical tasks

Another way to use automation for small business growth is to implement critical tasks and operations.

Leveraging business automation tools to improve your operations and increase productivity can help your business unlock new levels of growth.

For example, automating sales, marketing, customer service tasks and other customer relationship management (CRM) processes with business automation tools allow for more efficient communication with customers.

Business automation can also help with task management, scheduling, inventory management, and more. It can also speed up processes, reduce errors, and reduce overall costs.

All of which contribute to your small business growth.

3. Interpret your data

Business automation can help you make better decisions.

Business automation tools can help you quickly analyze business data and look for patterns to make informed decisions. This is harder and takes longer without them.

From understanding what your customers need to their buying behaviour and understanding the health of your business in real-time, implementing business automation can be a powerful tool to help small business owners understand their numbers and drive growth.

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