With the technology available today, businesses can no longer ignore the cost of manual processes. According to a study, businesses can lose up to $1.3 million annually on manual, paper-based workflows. These tedious, repetitive tasks can hinder your business’s ability to align processes and goals. As a process analyst, operational excellence, or intelligent automation leader, you’re likely always looking to evolve alongside your industry peers.
If you want to chart a seamless course to a thriving business, the first step is to enhance your workflows and increase efficiency. By automating your key organizational processes, you can save time, stay agile, and boost productivity. High-performing solutions help your organization operate optimally and address inefficiencies so you can focus on your bottom line.
In an increasingly fast-paced world of digital advancement, automating your business processes can help you stay competitive and keep up with the industry. From your executives to employees to customers, automation technologies help drive business success.
Salesforce reports that over 90% of employees agree that automated solutions increase productivity, while 85% agree that they boost collaboration. Finally, almost 90% of workers said they believe automated solutions enable them to get more done and make faster decisions.
With more time on their hands, employees can prioritize other high-value tasks, such as building positive customer relationships. When your teams can focus on providing excellent customer service that reinforces your brand’s values, you can more easily establish yourself as a reputable business.
Reducing your staff’s workload with automation can also promote a culture of work-life balance and fulfillment. Because using automation minimizes errors and labor, your business can benefit from cost savings.
The advantages mentioned above are just a scratch on the surface of what automation can do for your business. Let’s dive into the specific ways automation can empower your company to evolve and excel.
Your sales team is responsible for identifying, communicating with, understanding, and providing solutions to customers. If you’re still relying on manual processes for acquiring leads, you could be wasting valuable time and missing opportunities for success. Toggling between emails, spreadsheets, and lagging legacy systems may be hindering the effectiveness of your sales tasks.
Sales automation eliminates the need to perform many repetitive and time-consuming tasks. You can streamline lead qualification, prospecting, follow-ups, and quoting to maximize your sales workflow. Automation enables your sales team to focus more on finding new customers, strengthening communication, and launching marketing campaigns.
It’s no secret that the customer experience is an essential aspect of brand loyalty and business growth. Prompt service, minimized waiting time, and quality interactions are critical elements that can make or break a customer’s perception of your business. When they’re in need of assistance, customers expect you to resolve their issues with immediate attention.
Negative business experiences and reviews can have a poor financial impact on your company and affect future sales. One study indicates that negative reviews hold more weight for consumers than positive ones, potentially impacting who they will give business to.
By automating customer service capabilities, your customers can receive enhanced communication, personalization, and convenience. For instance, many brands today use chatbots to provide fast and concise answers to common consumer questions. Automation gives your customers the help they need without making them wait in long queues. Likewise, your customer service representatives can prioritize communication with customers who have complex issues and concerns.
Your human resources (HR) department is responsible for many onboarding and offboarding tasks. A survey found that only about 50% of new employees report a satisfactory onboarding experience, while 32% find it confusing and 22% find it disorganized. If your HR teams rely on manual, inefficient processes, it can frustrate everyone involved.
Your business ends up wasting time and losing handpicked talent. Rather than repeating the same tasks over and over with each new hire, your HR team can benefit from automation that streamlines the entire process from recruitment to offboarding. For example, automation may help with:
Automation in your HR department can also help cut labor costs and create a swift onboarding process that boosts employee retention.
Your expense approvals workflow can often be a complex, multi-layer process. Tracking your expenses manually is both time-consuming and inefficient. Many sales teams have specific or multiple conditions for approval, creating a lengthy process. Automating your expense tracking workflow can speed up your approvals and minimize delays across your departmental budgets.
Software solutions that help you monitor and analyze expenses can reduce the risk of human error and produce cost-saving opportunities. Automated expense tracking enables your business to take a more proactive approach than manual expense reporting. Real-time visibility into your expenses makes it easy to see exactly how employees are spending and reimbursing them efficiently.
The global marketing automation industry revenue grew by over 20% between 2021 and 2023 to nearly $5.9 billion. Nowadays, with so much content spread through social media channels and online campaigns, businesses can no longer keep up with the increasing number of competitors who use automation. Whether you’re planning email marketing campaigns or want to schedule posts ahead of time, automation in marketing makes it possible to coordinate these activities across multiple channels.
Though your marketing teams have unique talent and ideas for showcasing your company’s values and products, managing separate social media accounts can take up valuable time. Using automation platforms means your teams can boost engagement and more effectively strategize content schedules. Digital marketing and social media automation can also free up your employee’s time so they can focus on creating more substantive content for promoting your brand.
Manual tasks can hold your business back from reaching new goals. By harnessing the powers of automation, you can save valuable time, money, and effort. With improved efficiency, your teams can prioritize more high-value tasks that take your business to the next level.
Salient Process is ready to help you maximize your workflow with generative AI and automation technology. Our solutions and products are designed to transform how your business operates, from automating time-consuming processes to enhancing workflow management.
As an IBM Premier Business Partner and a leader in Digital Business Automation, we’re here to craft an automated solution tailored to your business’s unique needs. Are you ready to learn more about the power of automating your business processes? Contact us today to speak with one of our experts.
