In recent years, a growing number of businesses — regardless of size — have increased the amount of automated services they use within their daily operations. However, not everyone has been able to make this critical leap, and in many cases, that may stem from the fact that they don't know what automation can really do for them.
Some businesses may be leaving added efficiency on the table just because they haven't fully explored their automation options. With that in mind, entrepreneurs should read on to learn more about the steps they may be able to take on this front:
1) Responding to "contact us" leads
When you put a "contact us" form on your website, you shouldn't have to personally respond to each one individually, according to Keap. You can automate a response, and then have that system route the message to the appropriate party. Along similar lines, chatbots that automatically pop up on your website can handle much of that critical information-gathering.
2) Welcoming new clients into the fold
Likewise, once you effectively lock in a new client, your employees shouldn't have to take the time to write (or even copy-and-paste) an email message welcoming them to your family. With the right automation, you'll just enter the appropriate information and the welcome message will literally write itself.
3) Onboarding
There are many aspects of the onboarding process that can be tedious for your HR department. Frevvo noted that with the right software, many of the forms that need to be filled out can be done electronically and then filed away appropriately, without the need to carefully review every single document.
4) Employee reimbursement
When employees travel or submit mileage, it can be time-consuming to deal with those processes by hand. If you automate your reimbursement system, all someone has to do is review the pertinent documents and make a few clicks to approve.
5) Handling various HR tasks
When you don't automate things like putting vacation days, sick time and more into your work calendar, it can create a confusing mish-mash of information that's extremely difficult to manage. When you automate processing these requests, it's much easier to see the big picture and make better decisions.
6) Customer outreach
If you have an automated system in place, you can more effectively reach out to customers on a timely basis, according to Oracle Netsuite. For example, if you are an independent auto dealership, you could set up a system to automatically email past customers when it's time to get scheduled maintenance. You could also let them know — sometime down the line — that they might want to start thinking about upgrading their vehicle.
When you are making critical changes to your organizational structure, it can be a good idea to bring in new people as well, so that you are fully set up for success — and that's where YES Partners can help. To see some of the roles that we have already successfully placed, click here.
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