Whether you have a small start-up or a fully flourishing company, there’s no doubt that it can be difficult keeping up with day-to-day tasks, not to mention these take up valuable time that could be spent growing or expanding vital aspects of your business to boost sales. Luckily, there are ways that you can delegate important tasks without fear that things will run amok without your supervision and guidance. In fact, there are some solutions that provide more sufficient results than if you do them yourself, and this is taking advantage of automated processes.
While going fully digital in every aspect is not in the best interests of a business, there are some areas in which it is beneficial. On that note, these 7 business tasks can and should be automated to boost revenue.
To-Do Lists
To-do lists are very important for a company because it helps everyone stay focused on their respective tasks and allow the business owner to keep track of all the work. Manual to-do lists can leave lots of room for errors, which is why relying on automation for this can be a lifesaver. Not only will your to-do list be more organized, but it will be more effective. There will be fewer miscommunications among the staff and everyone will have the automation process to turn to in case they forget anything. This also ensures that all deadlines are met, and no costs are lost, saving a business owner time and money.
Proposals and Document Collecting
Trying to manually collect all necessary documents in a business is near impossible with how many documents circle the organization. What’s more, is that appointing a team to do this can be very risky. It’s even worse if business owners try to take on the task themselves when they already have a full plate. Therefore, turning to technology is necessary when it comes to storing, sending, and collecting important documents that need to be secured. The same applies to creating proposals, as trying to get one approved can take a lot of time. All this circling around and back-and-forth can be costly to the business in several ways. This is why investing in management software and having all these tasks automated is going to make life much easier for the business owner and employees, and it also makes your organization more secure by having the automation process take care of these things diligently. What’s more, is this type of work often requires many signatures; with an auto signature for electronic signatures, getting proposals and documents finalized now only takes seconds.
Appointment Scheduling and Online Forms
Perhaps one of the most tedious tasks yet very valuable to the company is appointment scheduling. Appointing an employee to handle all the calls and messages leaves room for plenty of mistakes to occur. The bigger your business gets, the more calls and schedules will be made, and it will become virtually impossible to have a staff member by the company phone and laptop at all times. Therefore, you could be losing potential clients by not automating this process. The same applies to online form filling. As simple as the task is, it is tiresome to repeat the same thing over and over again, and this type of redundancy can make even the most professional and conscientious people mess up. By turning to automation, you can have form filling and calendar scheduling apps do the work efficiently for you.
Data Backup
All this data is crucial for your business. With all the payments and back-and-forth being made, you want to ensure your clients feel safe using your online services. Moreover, an unsecured website is vulnerable to cybercriminal activity. So not only can you lose valuable data without an automatic backup process, but you can actually be ruining your business and its reputation if your customers cannot safely trust your establishment and online channels to give out their credit card information.
The automated world is confusing to many business owners, especially startup owners who are just finding solid ground. AI is still fairly new to most people, and understanding how this technology and machinery work doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Luckily, no one has to try to navigate machine learning on their own. There are expert consulting services to engage in that help you set up and understand the best ways to automate your business. These services remain available to you as your business begins to grow and provide valuable insight.
Emails, Social Media and Sales Marketing
In today’s digital world, marketing has many forms, and it’s almost impossible to boost sales without a rigorous team behind your email, social media, and sales marketing plans. However, tasks like these can take all day and need to be monitored at all hours, making it a difficult job to be accomplished by personnel. This is also the aspect that clearly defines your reputation to clients. If the organization’s email or social media platforms are not tended to frequently, potential customers won’t bother waiting around for long. The perception of your business is based on how well you perform, and if you fail to correspond in a timely manner, this could lead to dire consequences. With email management software, emails are automatically sorted to ensure you are made aware of the most urgent emails first. It also sends automated messages to make it easier for the recipient to navigate your company and find what they’re looking for, or reach you urgently for important communications. Social media posting can also be automated without having to rely on personnel, and there are apps to assist you with sales marketing to help improve cash flow.
Recruitment and Lead Nurturing
Finding leads is difficult, but keeping leads is harder. Letting them slip through your fingers due to poor organization skills or a lack of a large enough team is consequential. This is the fastest way to lose revenue. When it comes to recruiting and hiring new employees, this is another aspect in which you can lose potential employees that would be a great asset simply because you are trying to manually keep up with all the resumes. You can have your leads and potential hires all sorted digitally to help you catch them before it’s too late.
Invoicing and Billing
Finance management is considered the most important part of a business. If one falters here, the aftermath affects everyone from the business owner and employees to the clients. Keeping track of your finances is the only way to ensure what you are doing is actually boosting revenue. Trying to fill and track invoicing and billing details manually is a surefire way to make errors, and this is one area that you absolutely need to keep track of. If you choose to automate just one aspect of your business, it should be finances.