Why automation is key to boosting small business productivity?
Most often, we realize the potential of technologies like automation when a critical situation arises. The impact of COVID-19 has forced organizations around the world to transit to a work-from-home productivity model, and many of us are able to execute remote work successfully due to automation. In this post, we’ll explore how automation in small business improves productivity and the different areas where companies can implement automation.
Related Reading: Quickly Transit to Remote Working with InfinCE
From small tasks such as electronic document signature to intelligent data processing, automation in small business offers limitless possibilities to improve productivity in the small business environment. It is important for decision-makers to invest in the right areas.
If you are a small business owner looking to turn your workforce more productive through automation this year, then here are 4 areas you need to look at:
1. Automating Sales Workflows
Your sales team often creates the biggest customer impact zone in your business and hence is a worthy contender for incorporating automation in its daily routine. So, what are the sales processes that can be automated within a small business?
Some examples include assigning associates for leads, setting automated response channels for incoming leads such as emails, IVR based tele-calling or any other contact channels like social media. Once a lead is assigned to an associate for nurturing and conversion, then the next area where automation can kick in is for reminders and follow-ups. Activities involved in deal nurturing and closure can be automated to make the lives of sales folks easier and ultimately improve the productivity of the whole team.
2. Project Management
Today’s workforce demands increasing flexibility in their work and may avail benefits such as remote work. When there are multiple people working on a single customer project or task, and if there are remote resources involved, then project management becomes a challenging endeavor if everything is to be manually handled by managers using spreadsheets, IM and email conversations. This is the right area to bring in automation using state of the art project management platforms.
Related Reading: 5 Ways A Project Management Tool Can Help Your Business Grow
By enabling automated monitoring of project schedules, individual work progress, and dependency metrics for collaborative tasks, it becomes easier for managers to have a grip on project timelines and ensure that everyone is at the same pace transparently.
3. Procurement and Logistics Processing
There are several routine tasks within procurement departments in a small business that takes up too much time and effort if done manually. A good example would be invoice processing once supplies are obtained. As your business grows, these routine jobs would incur a significantly high volume of effort and can lead to highly inefficient business outcomes due to errors in manual processing. This is where bringing automation in small businesses can be a game-changer. You not only eliminate errors but also improve the speed of processing and completing redundant tasks.
Approval workflows, scheduling, tracking inventory and vendor notifications are some of the key areas in procurement where automation in small business can vastly change the existing operational landscape.
4. HR and Payroll
Typical human resources work schedule has components that are grossly manual effort intense like payroll processing, profile and resume screening for recruitment, appraisal and performance tracking, rewards and feedback collection, and much more. Automation in any or all these areas will help the HR personnel to be more pro-active in managing employee relations while technology takes care of the manual effort in enabling the same. Ensuring that your employees are engaged is a fundamental goal that needs to be achieved for overall business success and making sure your HR team is empowered to do that via automation is hence a key focus area.
Related Reading: Tips For SMBs To Boost Growth With Increased Employee Engagement
Automation in small business is one of the key pillars for propelling companies into the next level for the coming years. As more disruptive business and market conditions continue to show its face every year, it is important for small businesses to remain competitive and allot enough core business skilled employees to handle newer challenges. By utilizing enterprise platforms like InfinCE, you can enable seamless automation across your key business units and leverage human manpower for more decisive operations. Get in touch with us to know how you can leverage the automation capabilities of InfinCE to create the next level of success for your business.
