Automation is a popular topic in the business world, and it’s a great way to save time and money. Automation can help you streamline your processes, reduce errors, and increase productivity. In this post, we’ll take a look at 10 automation practices that can save your team hours each week.
1. Automate repetitive tasks
Repetitive tasks are a given in most jobs, but they can be a huge drain on your time. Whether it’s data entry, creating reports, or sending follow-up emails, these tasks can quickly add up and eat into your day.
The good news is that many of these tasks can be automated with the help of tools. For example, you can use a CRM to automatically log customer interactions, or set up an email marketing platform to send targeted messages to your customers.
By automating these repetitive tasks, you can free up your time to focus on more important work. Not only that, but you’ll also reduce the risk of human error, and increase efficiency.
2. Automate data entry
Data entry is one of the most loathed tasks in any business. It’s tedious and time-consuming, but it’s also a necessary part of keeping your business running smoothly. Fortunately, there are many ways you can automate data entry to save your team time.
One of the best ways to automate data entry is to use a CRM (customer relationship management) system. CRMs allow you to store all of your customer and lead data in one place, and they also offer a variety of tools to help you automate data entry.
You can use web forms to automatically capture lead data and enter it into your CRM, and you can also use integrations to automatically sync data from other tools and apps with your CRM. This can save your team hours of time each week, and it also helps to ensure that your data is always accurate and up to date.
3. Automate report generation and distribution
Reporting is a critical part of many business functions, but it can be time-consuming. Not only do you have to gather the data, but you also have to format it and then distribute it to the right people.
Fortunately, you can automate the entire process. By connecting your data sources to a business intelligence tool, you can set up automated reports that pull in data in real time and automatically format it for you. You can then use a workflow automation tool to automatically distribute the reports to the right people on a regular cadence.
With this approach, you can save hours of time each week that would have been spent manually generating and distributing reports. Plus, you can rest assured that your team is getting up-to-date information.
4. Automate email campaigns
Email marketing is a powerful tool, but it can be time-consuming to create and send emails, especially if you’re doing it manually.
With email marketing automation, you can set up email campaigns ahead of time and let the software send them out for you.
Use email marketing automation to send welcome emails to new subscribers, birthday emails, promotional emails, and more. If you run a referral program, you can also use referral tools like ReferralCandy, to send automated invitation emails to customers.
You can even segment your email list and send targeted emails to different groups of people, all on autopilot. Also, you can use AI email writing prompts to assist with email drafts.
Not only will this save you time, but it can also help you increase your email open and click-through rates.
5. Automate meeting scheduling
The more people involved in a meeting, the more time it takes to schedule. You have to find a time that works for everyone and then manually send out invites.
For a more efficient process, use a meeting scheduling tool like HubSpot Meetings. This tool integrates with your calendar and allows you to set your availability preferences. You can then send a link to the meeting invitees, and they can select a time that works for them.
The meeting will automatically be added to both calendars and you can send reminders to attendees — a workflow many modern AI recruiting tools also streamline for interview scheduling. This will save you time and help you avoid the back-and-forth of trying to schedule a meeting.
6. Automate social media posting
Social media is a full-time job in and of itself. But, with automation tools, you can make sure your social media accounts are active and engaging your audience without spending all of your time on it.
Tools like HubSpot’s social media tool, Buffer, and Hootsuite allow you to schedule your social media posts in advance. You can even use the tools to create a queue of posts to go out at the best times for your audience.
7. Automate lead scoring
If you’re in sales or marketing, you’ve probably spent time researching a lead to determine if they are a good fit for your product or service. This process can be time-consuming and take your team away from other important tasks.
Thanks to automation, you can now score leads automatically and spend your time on higher priority tasks, like reaching out to leads who are a good fit for your business.
Automatic lead scoring uses data from your CRM to determine which leads are most likely to convert. This can help your sales team prioritize their outreach and save time.
8. Automate task prioritization
The more tasks you have to manage, the more time-consuming it becomes to decide which task to complete next. This is why task prioritization is a task in itself.
Instead of spending precious time deciding what to do, you can use automation to decide for you. The most common way to do this is to apply a priority level to tasks as they come in. You can also use automation to sort and filter tasks based on a number of factors like due date, project, team member, or tags.
Task prioritization quickly becomes a time-consuming task in itself. Make sure to use the tools you have to automate this process and make it easier for you and your team.
9. Automate software updates
We all know how important it is to keep our software updated. But it can often feel like a full-time job just to keep up with all the updates.
That’s why it’s important to automate this process as much as possible. There are a number of tools available that can help you keep track of all the updates that are available for your software, and even automatically download and install them for you.
This can save your team a lot of time, and it can also help to ensure that your software is always up-to-date and running as efficiently as possible.
10. Automate team communication
Sometimes, the most effective automations are the simple ones. You don’t need a complicated workflow to save your team time.
One of the best automations for saving time is to create simple chatbots for your team communication. This same automation-first mindset is also seen in employee engagement survey tools, which streamline feedback collection without manual follow-ups. Create a chatbot to answer frequently asked questions, provide helpful resources, or even schedule meetings. You can also use chatbots to help coordinate team logistics, like collecting RSVPs for events, gathering preferences for team-bonding activities, or sharing reminders about upcoming company gatherings.
Chatbots can be used in a variety of team communication tools, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Chat. By automating simple tasks like answering questions, creating meeting summaries or scheduling meetings, you can free up your team’s time to focus on more important work.
Conclusion
It’s time to put your new knowledge to the test. Evaluate your current processes and identify which ones are the most time-consuming. Then, research the tools and platforms that will help you automate those processes and start using them.
