5 Benefits of Automating Your Business Workflows
No matter what your industry or business type, there are likely products that could help you automate your workflows. If this sounds like a foreign language, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Using business automation is a higher-level operations tactic, so it can seem overwhelming or impossible for small and mid-sized business owners who are scaling their company for the first time.
In this article, we’ll teach you how automation works and outline five benefits of using it in your workplace. This will help you decide if you’re ready to start automating or want to keep things manual.
What Is Automation?
Workflow automation is the process of setting up important processes and procedures in your business to start and run on their own (with the help of a computer). For example, an email marketing campaign that automatically starts sending marketing emails when someone submits their email address on your website.
Most businesses will use their customer relationship management (CRM) software to manage their automations for sales, marketing and customer service. Now that we know what it is, let’s look at how automation benefits your business.
1.) Improved Communication
The key to running a smooth business is quality communication. Not only between your staff and your customers, but also among your staff. Automating workflows can help with this by automatically triggering emails and tasks when a client is passed off to the next team.
For example, say your sales team closes the deal and a prospective customer signs a contract with your business. Your CRM can then automatically assign the account to a customer service team member and let them know they need to reach out and introduce themselves to the new customer.
2.) Efficiency
In this first example, you can see automation helps you make more efficient use of your team’s time. Whether it’s automatically assigning customers to representatives or helping a prospect move through the sales pipeline, using your computer to facilitate these small steps is much more efficient than having your team worry about them.
With all the menial tasks handled, your team can focus on providing better customer service and solving internal problems.
3.) Reduced Costs
You might be on the fence about investing in a subscription to a sales platform, CRM or even a content management system (CMS). It can seem like a lot of money to put down at once or even monthly, but in the long run this investment can actually save you money!
When you invest in systems that support automation, it reduces the number of team members you need to have on your staff. You don’t have to support salaries and benefits for people to simply click buttons and move prospects through your system anymore. With automation, you can invest in highly skilled employees and utilize the full range of their skills.
4.) Creates Valuable Data
This is one benefit that some people might overlook. The truth is, when you automate workflows it increases accountability, transparency and measurable results. All of this means you’re constantly gathering valuable data about your business and customers.
With the data your computer system collects, you can create dashboards to track your business growth and see where your processes are struggling. This is a great way to identify bottlenecks, cracks in the system or new areas that need some automation.
5.) Better Customer Service
All in all, the biggest benefit of automation is that you can provide better service to your customers. Automation ensures timely responses, helpful interactions and an overall positive relationship. When your service team has access to the full customer journey (which they do through the data you collected), they can tailor their service to a customer’s unique needs.
Automating workflows can feel intimidating if you’ve never done it before. However, if you’re looking to scale your business and start growing rapidly, it’s the best way to kickstart your processes, support your team and achieve your goals.