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Business and automation go together like peanut butter and jelly. Some people may not like the combination, but there’s no denying that it works. Many repetitive and time-consuming tasks can be streamlined through automation. Something that takes hours to do can be finished in just minutes with better quality and a lower chance of human error.
The benefits of integrating automation in your business processes are many. All of which contribute to help you run your business with more ease.
What is automation?
Automation, as a whole, involves technologies that reduce human intervention in processes. In a business setting, automation means employing software applications that will do certain processes without human intervention. These processes are usually repetitive manual tasks that take up production time. Busy work that takes a lion’s share of production time that could be used in more productive pursuits.
Automation could involve something as easy as auto-filling forms to automating processes involved in making accounting easier (like processing payroll). All designed to make processes more efficient and employees more productive. It also reduces the amount of human error in the process as automated steps are run by computer programs that require little to no manual, human intervention.
How does automation help in running a business?
Running a business is no easy feat. Making sure all the processes are running smoothly, all the deadlines are met, customers are happy all while keeping an eye on your bottom line can be more than stressful. Automation can help you with all of these.
Automated processes
Business processes are rife with areas where automation can be applied. There are many tedious and time-consuming administrative tasks that could benefit from automation. One study conducted on businesses reported that managers spend 8 hours a week on average doing manual, unstructured tasks, and a quarter of the respondents of the same study reported spending up to 20 hours per week doing repetitive, manual tasks.
Introducing automation into the processes that have these time-consuming, repetitive, manual tasks will cut down processing time by more than 50%. This frees up more production time for your employees.
Also, the process of getting automation into your processes can help you identify the bottlenecks in your production flow. This also weeds out unnecessary or redundant steps and helps streamline the overall process. This improves process efficiency. Plus, because the automated processes are run by computer programs and require very little human interaction, the chances of human error are minimal.
Document management
Businesses are full of data. Customer data, spreadsheets, job aids and training documents, inventory.
Automated document management systems centralize your data, making it easier to store and retrieve files. It also makes updating and disseminating them quicker. Any updates that need immediate application can be made and sent out to the affected groups expediently. This also makes securing your data easier. You can grant access to sensitive files only to those with need to know via your automated systems.
Automated document management also has the added benefit of helping your company go green through paperless documents. Not only can you save money by going paperless, you also contribute to helping the environment by lowering your carbon footprint.
Compliance
All businesses need to adhere to a set of regulations and controls mandated by the government. These controls are in place no matter which country you have your businesses set up in. When running a multinational company, or even if you are a small start-up business operating out of a single office building, keeping abreast of the changing regulations can be a bear.
Integrating compliance automation into your business can help you out with remaining compliant with the regulations that govern your business. This will give your business the capability to do self-assessments and do control analyses and testing. It helps keep you up to date with regulations.
Noncompliance could result in hefty fines and legal battles that could not only drain you financially but also impact your ability to continue on as a business. More businesses realize the importance of introducing compliance automation into their businesses, knowing that the ROI will be worth it in the long run.
Customer service
The lifeline of every business is its customers. The better you serve your customers, the more your business grows. Keeping your customer engaged and addressing their needs in a timely manner is important in keeping customer loyalty.
This is where automation can help greatly. Chatbots, interactive voice responses, and automated emails are some ways that automation can be integrated into the customer service silo. These can be the considered first level of response. Routine questions like asking for account balances or queries about certain products can be answered by chatbots and email bots. This narrows the waiting time that customers usually experience when in the queue for an available voice agent. Automation also helps you anticipate your customer’s needs by analyzing customer data.
This also cuts down on your customer service costs. With an automated system, you can reduce the number of new hires you need for customer service.
Conclusion
Automation can help make running your business easier. It can also help you keep customer loyalty and reduce your operational costs. Not to mention, it helps in keeping you compliant with regulations and avoiding fines and penalties. Overall, integrating automation into your business processes is a giant step in the right direction you would not want to take alone. Therefore, you could find a tutor, a mentor to guide, and help you along the way.
Areas Where Business Process Automation Can Improve Efficiency
Business process automation is ongoing.
This frees up your employees to concentrate on the more important decisions in running your business while minimizing human errors that often occur in mundane tasks.
It also frees up your employee time so that when they do have contact with your customers, the focus is more on customer satisfaction and less on the risk of manual data entry errors that can happen with older systems.
Automating this process saves time, can offer more robust reporting to better oversee on-boarding procedures and gives new hires the tools they need to succeed in their position.
Automation in their area improves communication between internal departments that might not always see each other physically and eliminates the errors caused by too many members of your staff having contact with a client without updated information.
The global industrial automation and control systems industry size is estimated to reach USD 223.0 billion by 2025, according to the new report by Grand View Research, Inc.
Factors such as rising labor costs, rapid expansion in the manufacturing industry, and the need for precise manufacturing methods and accuracy in end products are significantly driving the global market.
However, high initial deployment costs of the control systems is expected to pose a significant challenge for the market’s growth in developing economies.The governments across the globe are increasingly investing in research and development activities towards Industry 4.0 transformation.
For instance, the U.S. government is planning to spend significant capital into the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and the digitization of manufacturing processes over the next five years.
Whereas in China, the labor and material costs are continually increasing, thus the industries are actively focusing on digitization to transform the old production methods.
The strategic plan of the government of China, Made in China 2025, aims at transforming the country into an advanced production nation by producing higher-value products and services.
Over the years automation is an aspect that has touched almost every industry across the world.
The best software development company can effortlessly integrate these aspects into the software they build.Business automation software helps businesses to drive revenue and thrive in challenging markets.
Research by IBM suggests that AI-supported automation will generate billions of dollars worth of labor value in 2022 alone.
In this article, we will delve into the benefits of business automation and its most commonly overlooked aspects.What is Business Automation?Business automation is concerned with the use of technology to perform repetitive and laborious tasks.
Business marketing automation includes tasks such as:Lead generation, segmentation, and nurturingAdvertisement managementEmail marketingSome of the most famous marketing automation tools are Marketo, Hubspot, Eloqua, and Salesforce to name a few.Accounting, Book-keeping, and Accounts payable AutomationWhile marketing automation is concerned with the external processes, the accounting, book-keeping, and accounts payable automation is more concerned with the internal processes of the business.The automation of accounting accounts payable and book-keeping helps a business simplify the financial processes and remove needless manual labor in financial activities.
Normally the financial automation deals with the following areas:Bank account managementGeneral ledger managementInvoice managementThe purpose of accounting, book-keeping and accounts payable automation is to simplify and streamline the various financial processes and reduce the potential for error in the process.
With the advent of technological era, everybody wants to have the best experience without spending a lot of time and money.
Nowadays, almost every business tries to promote their products online, businesses are launching websites to get more traffic to increase their sales.
In today’s age where competition is at its peak, the goal of every business is toIncrease brand identityAttract customersGenerate incomeThese goals can be achieved easily by making well-organized and well-designed websites.
When it comes to engaging the online users, beautiful graphic designs and solid content are not the only things that can make the user happy or satisfied.
User experience is one of the important things that businesses need to consider after launching a website or designing apps for mobile and desktop users.UX (User experience) The primary goal of your website is to provide the best user experience to users so that they leave your page happily and recommend your website to their friends and family.
UX development mainly focuses on adding all the important elements in an application to increase the traffic.UI (User Interface)UI focuses on the presentation of a website to entice customers.
