All areas of a Business and their functions can benefit from the incorporation of automation technologies. Making this decision is necessary to increase agility, reduce costs, improve productivity, reduce delays, minimize errors and improve customer satisfaction.
Automation of the different areas of a Business and its functions
An automation strategy allows to systematically apply the right tools to optimize the benefits of these technologies and improve results. There are several types of automation useful for SMEs and their proper choice can multiply the benefits for the business.
Today, there is a wide variety of options, some designed specifically for different areas of a company and its functions. Among the most likely to make the biggest difference are the following:
- Marketing and electronic commerce automation. The technology is responsible for collecting and processing customer data to inform how the right message can be delivered in the right place and at the right time. All this, while providing timely support to improve customer acquisition and retention. Email marketing software, CRM Softwares or chatbots would be good examples.
- Business process automation (BPA). In this case the goal would be to execute recurring tasks in which the manual effort can be replaced by technology to speed up the workflow, minimize costs and increase efficiency. Many areas of a company and their functions would be optimized, such as recruitment, billing or tax management.
- Robotic process automation. Almost in all functions, it is possible to find repetitive tasks that are time-consuming and yet do not add great value to the business. For example, copying and pasting data, transferring files and performing mechanical tasks are occupations that can be automated so that everyone wins.
- Chatbots. These are affordable solutions that allow SMEs to offer uninterrupted customer service, access information instantly and increase the efficiency of operations.
- Inventory Management Automation. The first step is to integrate with the provider’s system to automatically add, edit, delete and transfer product information to the e-commerce website itself. Making this decision ensures the updating of the data and verifying the availability of products in real-time to minimize pending orders or cancelled orders while improving the shopping experience.
It is true that implementing automation in different areas of a company and its functions requires some investment in IT to configure technology and standardize processes. Therefore, it is convenient to prioritize resources effectively, identifying the areas in which automation can generate the highest ROI.
From there, it only remains to enjoy the advantages of having taken this step; benefits as a greater ability to adapt to the demand of the market, the reduction of labour costs, the impulse to the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns or minimization of human errors.