How to Automate in Your Business and Save Time and Money

We live in a world where everything needs to be done now. Most of our personal lives are automated – bill payments are taken care of through standing instructions on our bank account; most of preparatory work for food is done through a food processor, and it is even possible to get restaurant-like food at home. In this light, is it too much to expect that some sort of automation is implemented in business also?

Here are some examples of how automation is helping businesses:

Adopt a marketing tool

Quite often, our business has all our leads in one system, there is a tracker to keep a regular check on them and a third to generate reports. Nowadays, however, there are marketing tools that can do all these on their own, and then some. Over time, they have become more and more sophisticated and a quick search on the internet will give you several examples that suit your budget and requirements.

RSS Feeds

It is imperative that you are aware of what is happening in the market which might affect you. However, it is not possible that you read up enough even as you run your business. In such a scenario, it is very useful to set up RSS feeds on websites that have been useful to you in the past. These feeds can be delivered straight to your email inbox. Then you can read them at your convenience, even from your smartphone.

Use a CRM tool

A Customer Relationship Management software helps you keep a tab on your customers. A lesser known feature in most such software is its ability to customize messages for the other person. You can change salutations, relevant financial figures, when they should be sent the email or contacted otherwise (SMS, phone, etc.) in just a few clicks.

Remind customers to pay up

You can set up your accounting software to send reminders to your customers about the payments they need to make. Advanced software even allow you to make exceptions, such as not sending any payment reminders to customers who have standing instructions on their bank account or who have paid before you sent the reminder.

Analytics

In the old days, a person who could make sense of random data points and make a story out of it was called a wizard. Now, it is called analytics. And you do not need expensive software to analyze the data you have, even though having one will not hurt! The humble Excel spreadsheet has several features that can be put to good use and see what those numbers that you have not glanced over mean to your business.

IVR

Interactive Voice Response provides an option to the customer where he can quickly get the information he wants without having to go through a queue of other callers. He can get answers to routine questions such as bank balance, credit card outstanding, payment due date, etc. However, you must make sure that the IVR options are interactive and simple; the idea is to have the customer get his answers on a self-service basis and not hang up the phone in frustration.

Automated Tweets

For posting your comments on Twitter, you can download the free utility from this link. For users who are new to the platform, it provides guidance to get started. For people who have been using it for some time, there are several tips and practices that are proven to help you market effectively.

Automated blogging

If you blog (if you don’t, you can start now!), it is not necessary to write on a regular basis. The idea is that people should perceive you write regularly. Here, WordPress can help you. It provides you a facility using which you can write as many blogs as you want, but only publish when you want. And yes, it can publish as per the schedule you decide!

Note taking

Remember the days when one would need to carry a fancy binder to take notes of various meetings? It is still done. The only difference is that it can now be done at one place and accessed elsewhere automatically. There are several tools (Microsoft OneNote, Evernote) which you can use to write. Your writing is saved on the cloud and you can access them from anywhere – smartphone, work computer or home computer.

As you see, there are several ways automation can help you in your business and take it places, all the while making your life a bit easier. However, you must take care to not let your business lose the human touch. After all, we are people and not machines, and we still love to talk with each other.