In business, it can often seem like your to-do list gets longer the more that you work. There is always something else that needs your attention. You’d love to hire more people, but will they be able to perform the role to your standards? Do you have time to train them?
There is a tried and tested route to achieving more in your business, in less time with fewer mistakes, and that is business process automation or automation for short.
What is automation?
Business process automation involves using a technology solution to manage tasks or workflows. The most straightforward tasks to start with are typically the ones that are highly repetitive and where a human touch adds little value.
Automation doesn’t necessarily mean robots; it can be as simple as an automated email sequence to nurture your prospects or establishing an ecommerce payment gateway on your website so that customers can buy online without calling you.
There’s a common misconception that automation is only for large businesses and ones with production lines; automation can be beneficial for companies of any size and nature.
Why automate?
Automation can bring a host of benefits to your business including:
- Greater quality and consistency in routine tasks.
- Increased capacity through time savings.
- Increased business efficiency.
- Reduced costs.
So, it’s clear that automation can help our business; but, how do we do it?
- Start with some quick wins
Start by critically reviewing your business and identifying the tasks that are highly repetitive and where your staff add little value to the process; perhaps they make mistakes or its hard to retain people because the nature of the work is so dull. Examples include automated systems for filing emails, call scheduling and tracking expenses.
Once you have identified the repetitive task find a cost-effective automated solution. For example, a simple bookkeeping package will automatically track your expenses through your bank accounts, which may reduce your staff costs or free up your time.
- Keep it as simple as possible
Don’t assume that every task that you want to automate needs a high-tech solution. For example, if you regularly receive the same types of questions from customers, start by publishing a simple question and answer section on your website that addresses these FAQs. Track the results that response has before you invest in a more sophisticated system, such as chatbots.
- Fix before you automate
There can be a temptation to automate processes that are broken, in efforts to reduce the problems. This method will only help you to be more efficient at making mistakes.
First, create methods that work, and then determine how to automate them.
- Streamline business communications
One of the biggest time wasters and productivity barriers in businesses is their internal communications approach. Urgent messages can go unread in busy inboxes that distract team members from serving your customers.
This problem becomes more complex when you factor in the number of teams who are now working remotely.
A cost-effective and straightforward solution is to invest in a communication software such as Slack that enables your organisation to have focussed conversations in specific sections of the tool, without email.
- Get your team on board
Automation can sometimes create a culture of fear and uncertainty as team members worry that machines will replace them. They may then actively work against your automation efforts in an attempt to ‘save their job’.
You can address this by explaining why the business needs to automate; whether it’s to be able to serve more customers, or to be more competitive. Show your teams how automating the mundane tasks then frees them up to do the more interesting work; such as spending more time with customers.
Once they are on board, incentivise your team to come up with automation ideas and to help with the implementation. For example, payments experts UTP Group implemented an online application process for their payment solutions after their teams told them that customers wanted a faster and more efficient onboarding process.
- Document the processes
Be sure to document your processes as you automate, so you have a central knowledge bank in your business that is not reliant on any one person’s memory, and that can assist with answering staff questions and onboarding new members. Find a team member who enjoys this type of work and excels at it.
- Replace yourself
If you run a business or you are a leader in a company, then one aspect of automation to consider is how you can replace yourself over time. It’s easy to become a single point of dependency, which is a risk for your business and means that you are likely spending your time on tasks that are not the best use of your time.
Critically assess your workload against your priorities, and determine what can be automated and what you can delegate to other competent team members.
- Work with the right partners
One of the most successful strategies when automating is to focus on your core strengths as a business and consider outsourcing the rest to a specialist who will likely be able to perform the role to a higher quality and lower cost.
Let’s consider your payments process. Why hire a team to create your payment solutions and to check transactions for ongoing fraud when you can work with a payment solutions provider that has a ready-made infrastructure to do all of that and more?
Instead, look across the market and find a payment solutions provider who offers all of the solutions you need; whether that’s a card machine, a payment gateway or a mobile card machine. Look for one that has an excellent track record on combatting fraud. For example, UTP Group benefit from the fraud detection systems of a well-known bank. Additionally, they complete a unique level of daily checks to keep you and your customers safe.
Conclusion: it’s never too early to start automating
Automation brings a host of benefits to any business, including increased quality, time savings and cost savings. It frees us from mundane tasks so that we can spend more quality time serving our customers and taking the business forward.
Start small, with simple processes that are repetitive. Implement the solutions and track the impacts. As you gain experience and see the results, you will begin automating more complex processes.
Remember your business’ core purpose and decide what you should do in-house and where you will achieve more success through the expertise of an external partner.
