Businesses of all sizes are constantly striving for efficiency while reducing unnecessary costs. As a business owner, you may also be looking for a solution that can address most of your operational concerns and increase the business’ output. Automation is something that can help you in this case.
Automation can handle a major portion of the mundane tasks like data entry and customer support that are part of business’ operations. As a result, it has become an essential component of every organisation over the years. If you are unfamiliar with business automation or its benefits, here is what you must know about them.
What is business automation?
Automation in business refers to the deployment of technology to improve efficiency. It allows you to carry out various repetitive and, sometimes, non-repetitive processes with little or no human interaction.
The primary role of automation is to replace or support workers with machines to perform routine tasks, allowing them to focus on providing more personalised and better services to customers. It also helps them prioritize other creative and value-adding processes in the business.
How does automation in business work?
Automation in business is a sequence or series of steps performed in a predefined order to accomplish a specific goal. The process begins with defining the business objectives and then preparing a strategy necessary to achieve them.
Once you are aware of the steps, you can integrate them into automation software and set rules for the execution of each step. The automation process will then complete the task in the order specified.
Also Read: Have you tried these 11 ways to improve cash flow in your business Types of business automation
There are several types of business automation based on the functions being targeted. However, the four most common ones are listed below.
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Marketing Automation
As a business owner, you should be aware that several marketing practices are repetitive. Automation can help augment your business’ marketing efforts without the need to hire many people. Moreover, marketing automation in business will help you obtain more quality leads, which can be passed on to your sales department to convert into potential customers.
You can implement this automation across various marketing mediums, including social media marketing, email marketing, and advertising campaigns.
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Accounting Automation
Accounting and bookkeeping automation can save your business both time and money. Using this process, you can easily manage daily or weekly tasks such as data backup, maintaining the account receivable and payable details, daily billings, and so on.
You can also implement this process in the execution of complex tasks such as general ledger management or book closure. The accounting automation software can perform a series of transactional jobs with no room for error.
Let's take the example of account payables (AP) to comprehend this better. Accounting automation will automatically collect all AP-related data, match it with previous records, and route approvals electronically. All of this occurs with little or no human interaction.
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HR Automation
The Human Resource Management System (HRMS) is the most common example of automation in business processes. This tool can assist you with everything related to workforce management, whether you want to screen an employee or officially onboard someone. HRMS is capable of handling and shortlisting resumes, managing existing or past employees’ data, payroll management, and a few other HR-related core tasks.
Other crucial tasks that HRMS manage include the following:
- Performance appraisal processes for employees
- Training requirements of new employees when they move to a new job role.
- Employees' tax form collection and filing.
- Identifying employees who are eligible for additional benefits such as ESOP.
- Preparation of confidential agreements, work contracts, etc.
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Process Automation
Process automation outperforms basic automation of tasks and is integrated into multiple applications throughout the business to improve the overall efficiency. Business process automation (BPA) collects data from multiple sources and generates reports that are useful for analysis by the employees. In contrast, its subset robotic process automation (RPA) enables you to automate routine tasks.
You can use BPA for executing the following tasks:
- File transfers
- Order entry
- Batch processing
- Automated emails
- Generation and distribution of business reports