Originally Posted On: http://it-henhouse.com/blog/top-10-automated-business-solutions-you-never-knew-you-needed
Are you making the most of automated business solutions?
Both off-the-shelf and custom-developed solutions reduce administration, decrease errors, and increase productivity, allowing you to focus on the business at hand. If your company is struggling with which areas of your business could benefit from automation, it can feel like an albatross around your neck. No need to worry. Don’t get your feathers in a bunch!
We are here to help.
Read on for our list of the top 10 automated business solutions you never knew
you needed.
Sales and Marketing Automation With Zoho CRM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmiutf3yTiI
1. Sales
Does your sales team need to take flight? Automate the sales pipeline. An automated software will notify your sales team of movements within the sales funnel and trigger the appropriate responses. Some of the simpler tasks can done without the need for a sales rep’s input. Automation allows your sales team to capture the detail of your customer journey through your different funnel stages. It can also serve as a springboard to understanding your customer needs, and your sales team closing more deals.
Workflow Automation with
Zoho CRM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-q8MYdfFUQ
2. Workflow Automation
Great automation software can help boost efficiency across your entire enterprise. With the right automation software, you can automate the entire workflow. Simple action items that automation can handle include:
· delegating tasks
· setting up meetings and reminders
· streamlining communication
You can apply this across most areas in your business. From sales and marketing to customer support and finance, most areas will see a benefit. You should also see a boost in efficient and effective communication between departments.
Zoho Email Marketing Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZgCTUOlPLE
3. Email Marketing
It’s becoming more and more popular now to use automation to help plan and create marketing strategies. One of the most common automation used in marketing is the
automation of emails. Remember birds of a feather, flock together. Be sure to segment your email list based on a wide range of demographics including economic criteria. Creating a preset demographic range will automatically filter newly added contacts from your sales funnel.
Properly segmented lists enhance the automation of tailor-made email campaigns.
4. Reaching Customers
When reaching out to your customer base, the inconsistently scheduled email here and there will not cut it. It is imperative that you create a plan to follow up with calls, messages, or offers, depending on your customer behavior. Left to a manual process for your sales team, these tasks will become time-consuming, tiring, and rogue.
Automation software will not get tired, disheartened, or forget a follow-up email. A nice plus is that it can analyze customer behavior patterns to pick the right time to send messages. An important key is to try to contact a lead right when they are most likely to follow through and buy (Pro tip: this is when they are looking through your site, or they have abandoned their cart). Automation in these areas can significantly boost your sales conversion numbers.
5. Social Media
For any business, in this online world, you need a strong social media presence. Creating original and relevant content will be up to you; however, automation can take the strain off the publishing and distribution of content. In order to be successful, you must be consistent. Automation tools allow you to prepare quality content in advance. The early bird catches the worm. Create the content now and then schedule a date and time for it to go out. You can pre-schedule content for all your social media platforms, website and other needs. This is a huge time saver – especially for smaller businesses and startups.
6. Customer Support
There are many benefits to automated customer support. For example, automation can
help you rank customers according to:
· their need for help
· the issues they are experiencing
· the contractual Service Level Agreement (SLA)
It can also assign a customer to the representative with the level of experience and knowledge to improve the customer experience. If you want to go a step further, you can set up chatbots on your site to cover the basic interactions. You should note that there is still some difficulty here in processing natural language.
Of course, you are not going to eliminate your customer service team entirely. They can and will still be effective, but you now have the flexibility to innovate how they support your customers. The world of bots is not quite ready to fly solo, yet.
7. Client On-boarding
Client onboarding is like customer support in the sense that you should automate it, but not completely. For the sake of productivity and cost-effectiveness, you can automate simple tutorials and educational programs. If users can complete simple tasks without human involvement, they should.
Automated onboarding is great when you are introducing clients to basic functions and concepts. Simplifying the process is the key. Using a streamlined business approach allows your company to maximize time and resources, by utilizing support reps for the more complex and technical tasks. Humans will always have their place, how creative you at using them is your rare bird.
NetSuite Finance Automation
8. Finances
Most businesses will have, at least, partially automated their finance functions. The finance world has become revolutionized with e-banking and e-accounting and they are a must in both business and personal finance management. Most business functions from paying bills, invoicing, and handling payroll can be automated. You can get reminders to replace cards that are about to expire or early payment discounts. No more squawking at canceled payments or late fees. Automating finance functions for your company is an absolute must! It will save your company time and money.
9. Backing Up Files
With an increased reliance on technology comes more of a chance for a tech disaster. Whether it is a system meltdown, natural disaster or security breach, you can and may lose data. Creating backup files doesn’t have to pluck your feathers if you automate this essential task. Using automated software, you schedule regular backups to ensure all your data is as up to date as possible. And the best part is, even the simplest of online storage services have this pre-built function. Your job here is straightforward, ensure that you have enough future storage for the growing needs of your business and let the software do the rest.
10. Feedback Reports
To get to know your customers’ needs wants and expectations, you have to research and study your market. You would be a wise bird to find out what people have to say about your brand and begin to use some social listening tools.
This task can be automated! Having concise weekly and/or monthly customized reports will give you a good starting point on customer trends. Items needing immediate attention can be prioritized for further research and follow-up actions. Keep in mind, there is no harm, no foul with a little in-depth manual research too, but these reports help present a clearer picture of your customer behaviors.
Automated Business Solutions You Don’t Want to Miss
As you can see, automated business solutions are ideal for most business processes. Whether your finance team is overburdened with paperwork, or your sales team is not filling its pipeline, automation will help modernize your business. If you want an IT consultant that can empower you to make technology yours through automation, contact us at IT-HenHouse today. Our unmatched agility will mean less downtime for your team and faster results for your business. Let’s hatch what’s next!
IT-HenHouse
1213 West Morehead St., Ste. 500
Charlotte NC. 28208
704-659-0665