The world is marching at a fast pace. Automation has drastically changed the business landscapes over the past decade. The way businesses ran a decade ago is a completely different universe from how they work now. As your business grows through time, so must its methods. In this era of automation, sticking to primitive business practices may not be a smart choice. It is already high time to align your business with the prevailing trends of technology to stay alive in the competition.
What does Automation mean?
Automation is the process of eliminating human efforts with the help of programmed software to perform repetitive and rules-based tasks electronically. As a small business owner, you have tons of tools for automation to ease the way your business works and improve margins.
The word automation sounds like a more sophisticated and expensive term for many. A majority of the crowd thinks that automation is replacing human employees with fancy robots and leaves it for big enterprises. But in reality, automation need not be expensive, but just strategic.
Let us dig into the details.
Types of Automation for Your Small Business
As a small business owner, you can take up automation that saves you a considerable chunk of time, labour and money in a multitude of ways. There are hordes of automation tools hovering around the web. Here are some types of automation that can pull up big chunks of difference in your small business.
Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is emerging as a key trend in B2C small businesses. Marketing automation is the use of software to refine the workflow by automating the repetitive email and website action tasks, scheduling social media posts and weighing the performance of the marketing processes. Email marketing software, CRM systems and chatbots are part of marketing automation.
Operation Automation
With operation automation, small businesses can free up the employee’s time and save them from drudgery. Moreover, operation automation can amplify your productivity to a great extent, as the software works round the clock, all through the calendar, unlike humans. You need not rely upon people to push and pass the process at each stage.
Business Process Automation
This is where repetitive and rules-based labour-intensive chores are left to the software that yields accurate results in a flash. SaasAnt Transactions is one such application that can bulk import the transactions from Excel to your QuickBooks account with just a click of a button.
Accounting Automation
The most time-consuming affair in most small businesses accounting is the manual data entries, a part of bookkeeping. You shall automate your accounting process with auto-entry tools that would set you free from the painful manual keying process. If you are using QuickBooks for accounting, then you must try the accounting automation software once.
SaasAnt Transactions is an effective application to import bulk transactions from Excel to your QuickBooks account. Not only with imports, it can also do bulk exports and mass deletes in a snap.
PayTraQer is a powerful payment sync tool that syncs the transactions from the payment systems into your QuickBooks account, automatically, without any manual intervention.
These are Intuit authorized applications that work perfectly fine and efficient with QuickBooks. You can start using these with their 30-day free trial.
You also have advanced applications that can take over your accounting process impeccably. These applications run with artificial intelligence that can suggest or take decisions learning from your inputs. These are more sophisticated versions of automated accounting.
Inventory Management Automation
Inventory management software shows you a panoramic picture of all departments of your business and their operations. It throws up detailed analytic reports regarding the inventory in your company. Inventory management software can also foretell the future trends of your inventory.
6 Concrete Benefits of Automating Your Small Business
By implementing automation, you will see these six chief improvements in your small business.
Align to Market Demand
Automation gives you the agility to toggle with changes in market conditions. You don’t have to add numbers to your crew to handle fluctuations in order volumes and trends. There is no need to hire employees and train them to harness inventory, process orders or handle payments where the order volume swells or when you pull in some changes to your business. Automation software can easily fit into any of your needs.
Reduced Labour Cost
Many businesses spend a big chunk of their budget on hiring employees to perform chores that are redundant and time and labour-suckling. You cannot move forward to the next step without these menial tasks like data entry and inventory management, yet you will have more complex chores on the pipeline to accomplish. In such cases, automation would be a boon for you to drive these tasks.
Amplified Productivity
The primary stand in taking up automation is the increased productivity it yields. Software, unlike humans, works 24/7 throughout the calendar. This ultimately speeds up the turnaround and dynamically boosts your productivity. The automation software takes care of the assigned task and performs it ceaselessly even if you are not there to harness them.
Clear-Cut Analysis
Automation software usually gives you a clear picture of the financial health of your business and helps you to keep it on track. Every piece of the transaction is taken into account and every movement in the relative department is noted by the software. Most software generates apprehensive analysis reports. You will have everything running straight and transparent.
Error-free Records
Automation software has zero-possibility to errors and so you will have accurate records all the time. Be it transaction or inventory details, everything is communicated between the software and so zero error is ensured. From invoicing to bookkeeping, automation relieves you from irksome manual keying and gives you accurate records faster.
Personalized Data-Based Marketing
If you are a small business owner catering to a small crowd or selling predominantly to businesses, you can easily rank your customers according to their order frequency, purchase volume and preferences. Automation can do the data collation, organising and analysis for you and give you the reports. You can now unleash your marketing assets and formulate strategies to raise your bottom line.
To better understand your business needs, begin with evaluating your everyday business processes. Analyse and find out what eats up the most time, labour and resources. Automation is brought in to save time, improve efficiency and thereby scoring high-profit numbers.
Final Thoughts
On top of everything, automation may be a choice today, but soon will be a necessity. So, upgrade your business with automation tools to enhance the way your business runs. Take time to analyse where you need automation for your business. Weigh the automation tools carefully and ensure that it is optimized for the cost and efficiency before you let it automate your business workflow.
