Humans have limited cognitive and physical abilities. Despite the best diligence and precautions, errors occur at work. Inevitable fatigue and monotony lower productivity and efficiency. Time-off and leaves cause delays and retards the competitiveness of the enterprise.

Automation is a panacea to all these ills. Automated systems execute tasks fast and accurately. Bots work round the clock, without leaves or overtime. They execute the assigned tasks without a dip in productivity or efficiency.

But automation costs money. Not all tasks are viable for automation anyway. Automation best suits routine, repetitive tasks. Automation of complex tasks may become counterproductive, and degrade the customer experience.

Here are the key areas that small businesses should consider automating. These tasks are easy to automate. Several open-source tools make automation in these are as affordable as well. 

Key Priorities for Small Business Automation

1. Marketing Outreach

Automating routine marketing tasks allows marketers to devote their time to higher-level tasks. Automation also improves customer engagement, as customers get timely reminders and offers.

Use auto-responders to send emails, e-newsletters, and other messages to subscribers on the mailing list. Some instances where auto-responders become handy include:

• Sending welcome messages to a new prospect, who sees an ad and clicks on the call to action

• Inviting people on the subscription list to a social media event.

• Dispatching emails or discount vouchers on products, based on the user’s browsing history.

• Reaching out to customers who abandon their shopping cart. About two out of every three shoppers abandon their shopping carts, for various reasons. Proactive outreach converts 63% of such abandoned merchandise.

• Sending thank you messages and feedback survey links to buyers. Configure to flag negative responses for follow-up action. Reaching out quickly prevents damage, such as a negative social media review.

• Contacting purchasers for renewal of the warranty.

• Sending birthday or anniversary greetings, with a discount code. An intelligent algorithm may even fix the discount in the voucher, after calculating the lifetime value of the customer.

• Soliciting referrals from customers at periodic intervals. Nielsen estimates 84% of people trust recommendations from people they know.

Prune email subscription lists. Use automated software to track engagement metrics such as open rate, clicks, orders, and web form opt-ins. Gmail and other email providers measure engagement based on how often people open, click and interact with emails. Low engagement scores, caused by high numbers of inactive subscribers, risk flagging the sender as spam.

Businesses adopting marketing automation increase sales productivity by 14.5%, and reduce marketing overheads by 12.2%.

2. Customer Support

No business can ignore customer support in today’s hyper-competitive environment. Businesses have to respond to customers promptly, without keeping them on hold. Deploying human agents, at scale, is not cost-effective for most small to medium businesses.

• Generate help desk tickets. The automated system makes it easy to prioritize important requests and track resolution.
• Deploy chatbots. Machine learning-powered chatbots identify keywords in the customer query and provide appropriate answers. Chatbots reply 24x7x365 and are a valuable first point of contact. It frees up expensive human agents to handle complex questions beyond the scope of chatbots.

3. HR Management

Automating routine HR activities streamlines routine administrative tasks. HR executives remain free to focus on their core competencies. Employee morale improves, as they are treated as internal customers.

• Recruitment: Automate web forms as the first stage of the recruitment process, to shortlist candidates. Algorithms shortlist candidates based on the set parameters. Automated emails to shortlisted candidates on the next steps save further time and hassles.
• Employee Documentation: Automated processes leave paper chasing to the software. If, for instance, the new hire has not submitted his academic credentials, the system sends an email. The email may offer a link to download the missing documents.
• Scheduling: Automated systems calculate the employees needed for specific tasks. It considers historical data and business estimates to arrive at precise estimates. It factors in leave requests, overtimes done on the previous day, and other factors, to prepare shift schedules.
• Self-Service: Employees resent reaching out to HR for routine tasks such as clarifying leaves, authorizing payroll deductions, and so on. Offer a self-service HR portal, to automate such tasks. For instance, when the employee makes a leave application, the system could check eligibility and approve it instantly. Notifications to supervisors and other stakeholders keep everyone in the loop.

4. Finance Management

Tasks related to finance and administration are resource-intensive and stressful. These tasks demand great attention to detail. Even the slightest of errors have big consequences. Automation makes these regular, routine tasks hyper-fast and accurate. Better processing of accounts improves enterprise cash flows and compliance.

• Invoice generation: Automated field service app generates invoices on work completion. The app collects rate and works details from the work order. It checks the technician’s geo-location coordinates to estimate time spent at work. It also pulls in data from inventory and other databases and generates invoices.

• Follow-up invoices: Keep track of invoices, and send reminders to customers who delay payment.

• Paying bills. Set up automatic payments for routine expenses, such as Internet and electricity.

• Receipts: Use apps that scan receipts and extract the necessary information. This automates accounting and tax preparation.
• Payroll and benefits: Automated payroll system collects details such as employee leaves, overtime, and other work details, from various enterprise systems. It adds emoluments and other benefits, and deducts tax and advances, to compute the salary. The system auto-generates payslips and reports.

5. Tech Administration

Technology is a great enabler and improves efficiency. But it comes with its share of hassles. Automating the key technology-related administrative tasks offers the full benefits of technology.

• Backups: Taking backup is an essential security requirement. But taking regular backups is also a productivity sapping disruptor. Use cloud-based backup solutions to automate backups. Set a daily or weekly schedule for the backup, when the system automatically backs up all the files. Saving all the files to an external hard drive manually may consume half a day!

• Software and security patching: Automate software upgrades and security patches. The sheer volume makes manual updates virtually impossible. Failure to download updates makes the enterprise more susceptible to malware attacks.

• Retrieving lost passwords: Processing requests for retrieving lost passwords manually is never viable. The automation software does the task in a few seconds. When the clients enter their email or mobile number in the form, the system syncs it to the client’s records and executes the process to resent the password. The automated sequence also sends out confirmation emails.

Forrester predicts automation to cut operating costs by 90%. But the benefits go much beyond cost savings. Automating routine, recurring tasks enriches the workforce and improves their productivity. Work enrichment boosts their morale and productivity. Happier employees do their jobs well and engage with customers better, and improve customer experience

Check here for Top Infrastructure Automation Platform Providers