We’ve all heard about how automation can help businesses – especially small and home businesses – operate at scale without getting too large and inefficient as an organization. Automation has been touted as the way forward, and there are more ways to add automation to business processes.
Unfortunately, not all businesses are taking advantage of automation. For some, automating tasks is not as simple as it seems. That is why in this article, we are going to talk about real-world tips and tricks that will help you use automation in real life.
Start with Simpler Tasks
You don’t have to think about automation in a complex way. In fact, most tasks you can automate today are actually very simple and repetitive. The problem is, doing those simple tasks repetitively costs a lot of time, money, and energy, which is why automation makes sense as a solution.
A good example is the order processing workflow that many home e-commerce businesses adopt. Rather than calculating inventory manually with every order you receive, for instance, you can integrate inventory management and automate the process.
The same is true for ordering goods or raw materials. The same inventory management system can be used to automate the creation – and even delivery – of purchase orders for the goods you sell or raw materials used in the production of your products.
Think Integration
Another way automation can be very valuable is when it is used to integrate multiple business solutions. Business solutions like Salesforce, Microsoft 365, HubSpot, and many others now run in the cloud. They are designed to be easy to use, but they are not the best when it comes to integration.
This is where automation comes in handy. You can use PieSync to automate the synchronization of contacts and customer data across multiple platforms. For instance, PieSync can handle updating your mailing list when you update your customer contact in Microsoft Outlook.
By integrating multiple platforms, many tasks can be further automated. PieSync in particular supports platforms like Zoho, Salesforce, HubSpot, Copper, and many others. Other examples can be explored through this link. Think integration and you will find a lot of ways to automate tasks.
Personalize
When you do adopt automation to simplify or even eliminate mundane tasks, don’t forget that you can still add personal touches to the mix. Automated emails, for example, don’t have to be all cold, and based on templates; there are ways to personalize those emails.
Using strings, variables, and CRM data, there are lots of ways to make automated tasks more humane, especially tasks that relate to communicating with the customers. Simply adding personalized details to your Mailchimp campaign can do a lot to your customers’ user experience.
Other tasks can be just as personalized. With the purchase orders we mentioned earlier, the amount of inventory ordered can be customized using calculations, ratios, and strings, elevating automation to a whole new level.
These tips are how you bring automation to your business. Ready-made platforms certainly make adding automation to different workflows easy. Give it a try and you will never look back.
