A lot of people are talking about automation. It seems to be quite a hot topic. Many people may be discussing it as a bridge while you build up your team or as a tool to help you get more out of your current team. No matter why it is being brought up, it’s about time you fully understand everything your team, your boss, or sales agents are talking about when they mention automation.
Here’s what you need to know. People are always looking for better and faster ways to do their daily tasks, especially the small ones. When those tasks are covered, you open the doors to only the high-value steps in your strategy, like closing deals or meeting new prospects. In the search to get precious time back, automation emerged. When you automate your business processes, you make them faster, more reliable, and less likely to make mistakes.
We’ll give you all the tools you need to talk about automation solutions in a way that even non-technical people can understand.
When people talk about automation, what do they mean?
Simplified, automation combines technology and minimal human intervention in business processes. It’s where repetitive processes in your day-to-day can be empowered by technology to free up your time to do other tasks. It’s become quite popular in the past few years as companies want to get the most out of their team. However, managers who are under pressure to produce results but can't expect the extra time and effort solely from their team members have also started using it frequently.
One of the primary reasons businesses automate their process workflows is to increase process productivity. The inaccuracies and inconsistencies of manual processes are eliminated through automation. Automating repetitive steps in a process saves a considerable amount of time. In addition to improving company revenue, automation also improves employee skills and work satisfaction.
Organizations that have implemented an automation solution indicated a 12% workforce capacity increase.
Leaders are looking to devise creative ways to get the most out of their day without continuously burning out their teams. Getting better results seems costly, slow to ramp up, and a significant burden for existing teams.
Who is automation for?
Many companies, sales directors, CEOs, members of revenue-generating teams, and anyone trying to up their sales, close more deals, etc., are turning to automation. Automation can minimize human error.
As many as 85% of business leaders believe that automation of their workload will enable them and their employees to focus more on strategic goals that are important for business.
When discussing business automation, we usually mean what is called Business Process Automation (BPA). It occurs when technology meets human processes. These tasks include email marketing, invoicing, data entry, scheduling content for social media, and cleaning your outreach lists. Workflows are created to go through your processes' automated steps so you can keep your focus elsewhere.
Why do companies use automation?
There are many benefits to adopting automation. According to McKinsey, “automation could raise productivity growth globally by 0.8 to 1.4% annually.” The 6 lead benefits of automation are:
- Saves time for your teams. Menial tasks, such as data entry, deduplication, and paperwork, can be done in record time.
- Cost reduction. This is still a top priority for most companies. One way to boost profits is to reduce costs or make more cost-efficient decisions. Automation helps maximize your current team and gives you the visibility to make intelligent economic decisions.
- Improved quality. This doesn’t mean that quality isn't good coming from your current team, but when tasks are taken off your team’s plate, they will be able to have laser focus on their most important tasks. This will improve quality within your team and with automation doing spot-checking and quality control.
- Less human error. We know your team is working hard, but mistakes do happen. And an overloaded team makes more mistakes. Not only will the time saving help your current team with their high-level tasks, but the tech will also help to reduce errors done in haste.
- Employee satisfaction. Menial and repetitive tasks are often the most hated among employees. Automation frees up your resources. Relieving your team in these tasks will increase their happiness and allow them to focus on where they want to be instead.
- Customer satisfaction. When you automate sales and marketing processes, your customers will be more satisfied. They no longer need to wait for responses; they can get real-time updates and won’t suffer downtime because of a different schedule or timezone.
Glossary/Words to know
Since 78% of business leaders believe that automating your tasks will increase productivity with all stakeholders, it’s clear that automation is here to stay. So you’re going to keep hearing about it. But don’t worry, we will give you a quick cheat sheet of words you’ll likely hear when discussing automation.
Automation Keywords
AI Artificial Intelligence
The ability to simulate human thinking and understanding with a computer. API Application programming interface
When you want a program to interact with another program, an API outlines how one program should do things and how the other will respond. Batch Processing
It simply means processing data in bulk. Automation can handle more than one job at once. CRM Customer relationship management
We’re sure you hear this term often. CRMs help you to manage and monitor your interactions with each customer to keep track of and learn from them. Integration
Aka System Integration, it relates to the ability of the software you’ve chosen for automation to communicate with other systems and tech. ML Machine learning
ML is a subsection of AI that helps you focus on other tasks while machines learn new skills to support you. Over time, like us, a machine can improve its learning and how to get things done. RPA - robotic process automation
RPA is just a fancy name for business process automation. It supports (and simplifies) the idea that a robotic workflow takes on your menial tasks. Software bots
Similar to RPA, software bots are programs designed to automate your tasks. You’re likely already familiar with some of them, like a chatbot or a web crawler. Workflows
A term we call Wrkflows, these are a series of tasks or processes that take a given job from beginning to end. Automation software either handles the entire workflow or, like our Wrkflows, at times, there is human intervention for more complex tasks.
Which Wrkflows are popular with each department?
Like your business processes and strategies, not every Wrkflow is created equally. There are Wrkflow uses for specific departments.
52% of business leaders believe that 10-30% of their daily tasks can be automated. But only 43% of AI high performers are led by a clear vision and strategy.
Not every team is looking at the same Wrkflow to add that extra boost to their strategy. We will walk you through the most popular Wrkflows broken down by department. This will help you better understand how these tasks are being used and how much work they can save you and your team.
Sales:
Marketing:
Customer Success:
Client Support:
Customer Ops:
HR:
Finance & Administration:
IT:
To get a better understanding of what you can automate, here are 5 revenue processes ripe for automation.
Automation for everyone
The key takeaway from this is that automation is very clearly the next move for a lot of companies. Especially for businesses looking to stand out from the crowd. When you look at Wrk, you can see that there’s a place for your tasks and your applications in many different stages of the automation process.
To begin automating your business processes, start with identifying which tasks are easily repeatable. Then define the goals from each of them. We can help you get started with automation slowly or all at once. Our hybrid automation approach is truly for everyone, with no code and a platform ready to take on your unique strategy.
To keep talking about automation, contact us today.
