With recent technological innovation, organizations can easily establish resolutions as market preferences change. However, small businesses need to step up their game to stay ahead of the competition. Doing so will help them increase their existing market share as they boost their brand reputation.
Automating business operations can ensure higher workforce productivity and increase overall organizational performance. This entrepreneurial approach reduces operational expenses while eliminating errors of traditional processes. In turn, companies constantly produce high-quality products while providing excellent customer services.
In this article, you’ll learn six surefire strategies to adopt automation for your startup company.
Assess Existing Business Operations
Entrepreneurs invest in automation because they want to aim for a quicker return on investment (ROI). However, you need to ensure that your business processes are efficient before you start automating your whole organization. Your existing informal processes are usually undocumented and depend on human resources, which is costly. More so, these components are poorly understood and mismanaged. So, you must improve your processes by understanding your current process landscape.
Improving small business processes revolves around focusing on determining and fixing inefficient organizational procedures. For instance, if your company has an employee who manually sends out invoices, you may consider getting accounting software from Automate by Helpsystems and others.
Organize LeadsÂ
Some customers may skip the contact us form and head straight for the phone. However, you may miss opportunities to establish relationships with your leads if you don’t have a process in place. Additionally, the intentions of your phone calls may not matter to your clients if you don’t have the proper execution.
You need to designate leads using software that’ll allow you to set up a form that people can use as they call. Enter the customer’s information and write relevant notes before designating a sales representative to follow up. As the rep contacts the new lead, the software automatically sends an introduction email from your small business to the prospective client.
Speed Up Networking Opportunities
During entrepreneurial conference events, your traditional goal is to stack business cards to build relationships with your fellow entrepreneurs. However, collecting these shouldn’t be your main objective. You must begin communicating with your new colleagues as soon as possible before they forget about the conversation you had.
You need to immediately transfer contact details from the business cards using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Then, you may tag the individual as a conference person or event contact. After this strategy, leverage automation software to instantly schedule an email to start an effective communication.
Send A Series Of Welcome Emails
A single sale transaction shouldn’t be the end of the connection with your customers. You’ll have to establish a strong first impression on your new clients by sending welcome emails. This strategy allows you to show support and appreciation by providing enough information about your small business.
However, creating and sending multiple emails at once is challenging if you’re planning to do it manually. Therefore, you must use automation software that’ll allow you to effortlessly stay in touch with your existing and new customers. In turn, you can automatically send the first email right after the first purchase, which may build up their brand loyalty.
Incorporate Repeat Sale
For most entrepreneurs, a single sale transaction isn’t a one-time activity. In fact, your mission is to make a customer want to purchase your products again. So, you must be proactive in convincing your consumers by automatically generating prompts for repeat sales. With a customer relationship management tool, you’ll be more organized and effective and better able to serve your clients.
Automation software immediately starts the clock right after a sale is made and sends a short follow-up message to your clients. For instance, if you sold a 14-day supply of a specific product, your consumer automatically receives an email before they order again. Additionally, you’ll have to provide a link to the product so your customers can simply click and buy without visiting your homepage.
Regularly Upload Documents
You must upload your supplier bills into financial software rather than print out paper trails. Doing so reduces accounting expenses and saves your employees a lot of time. Also, a point of sale (POS) software has tools you may use to determine important details to improve data entry efficiency.
You can use the software to upload portable document formats (PDFs) or email them to the right addresses. Moreover, you won’t ever have to locate your paperwork since you already attached it online. In turn, this strategy prevents you from constantly asking your suppliers to provide you with additional duplicates.
Key Takeaway
The world of commerce is extremely competitive. That said, you need to adopt these six strategies to automate your business operations. Doing so will help you increase customer loyalty, reduce costs, and improve overall company performance.
