Let’s face it, as a female business owner it’s a balancing act between being there for your family and being the magic for your business. Your time is precious! By employing simple automation techniques, you can streamline processes, boost productivity and efficiency and reclaim valuable hours. Let’s dive into the world of automation and discover how it can transform your business.
Assess Your Business Functions
First take a hard look at the processes under each function area e.g. Marketing, Sales, Accounting, Customer Service, Product/service delivery, HR, IT. This will guide your strategic decisions. Key questions to ask:
Where are the bottlenecks?
Where do you get the most complaints?
Where do most mistakes happen?
What are the repetitive tasks?
Prioritise
You can’t do it all at once, start by automating simple tasks for the quick win and build from there. This is a new process, and you don’t know what you don’t know.
There will be hiccups!
Once you’ve gotten your confidence, try tackling a critical area important to your team. A big triumph would boost morale and galvanise collaboration. Involve the team in prioritising the next area to tackle.
Investigate Appropriate Tools
Select technology tools that align with your business needs, and work the way your team works. If there are any yellow flags, keep looking. Here are some important requirements to look for.
Functionality – the marketing will promise to solve your pain points, but can the tool deliver?
There is seamless integration with your current technology.
It can scale up as you grow
Pricing – cost can creep up on subscription models, also consider implementation costs
Guaranteed protection of your data.
Resources for staff training
Customer support
Monitor and Optimise
Technology is constantly evolving, so stay informed of new trends. The beauty of online applications is that new features are added frequently - be on the lookout for ways to leverage upgrades to what you already use. Encourage your team, to monitor the automation and identify ways to improve efficiency.
By automating for productivity and efficiency you’ll eliminate many pressing issues, freeing your time to focus on new strategies, creativity and most of all self-care.
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Examples of Repetitive tasks
Marketing:
Social media posts
Email marketing
Personalised customer offers
Sales
Prospect engagement
Sales funnel management
Response to queries from potential clients
Follow-up reminders for sales reps e.g. from sales calls, conferences, networking events
Generating repeat business
Quote generation
Order processing
Customer Service
Onboarding new customers
Frequently Asked Questions
Birthday greetings
Customer surveys
Incident ticketing
Accounts
Invoicing
Payment due reminders
Admin/Operations
Appointment Scheduler
Appointment reminder
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