In today’s competitive business environment, time-consuming and frustrating workflows don’t cut it anymore. Unfortunately, there are still too many businesses bogged down by these processes, mistakenly assuming there’s nothing they can do about the wasted time and resources.

Luckily, there is one solution that can help your business simplify tasks and bypass unnecessary steps: automation. You may think that it’s just another buzzword, but the truth is, automation is gaining significant traction and is set to become an important technology for solving key challenges in the enterprise. 

What exactly is automation? In a business context, this can simply be defined as streamlining operations through intelligent technology. Automation can be applied to any repeatable processes or manual tasks to remove unnecessary and complex steps.

Specifically, automation is beneficial when it comes to streamlining these four common business processes that are present in nearly every businesses:

• Financial management
• Marketing
• Customer service
• Human Resources (HR)

Financial management

If your finance team is still using spreadsheets to perform functions, it can be hard for them to track and manage data with all the cells, rows, and columns. Using manual processes can result in costly errors. Take for example, the blunder made by Fidelity’s tax accountant, who forgot to add a minus sign, turning a $1.3 billion loss into a $1.3 billion gain.

With a host of technology solutions now available, key finance tasks such as invoicing, payment reminders and quote generation can now be put on autopilot. This not only minimises the risk of delays and errors; it also frees up significant time to focus on the responsibilities that really matter.

Marketing 

Every marketing department wants steady inbound lead generation and a better way to turn cold prospects into hot leads. A critical part of making marketing campaigns more accurate and empowering your team with better leads is to be less dependent on manual, time consuming processes.

Repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media posting, and even ad campaigns can be automated to achieve top-notch efficiency for employees and provide a more personalised experience for your customers.

Customer service

Your business should value customer service more than ever. It’s crucial to achieve high customer satisfaction without wasting much resources.

While customer service still very much requires human interaction, there are situations where technology can help save your reps time and improve the customer’s experience with your business. Examples of customer service automation include self-service portals, chatbots, and preloaded email replies.

Human resources 

The employee hiring process is a lengthy and detailed one. Often, finding high-quality candidates can keep your HR team busy for weeks as they go through stacks of applications. 

With so many hires in so little time, your team can look to automated HR tools to simplify the process. These tools scan through hundreds of applications at lightning-fast speeds and identify the perfect applicants by matching them with specific keywords.   

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Business process automation ensures that you’re getting the most out of every hour that goes into moving your business forward. As we mentioned before, the technology that makes this possible is already available, however, to achieve this potential, you need to invest in a robust business internet solution that is able to maintain the connectivity requirements of automation. Have a look at Nashua’s customised solutions that can help pave the way to smoother operation and improved productivity.