Why Business Automation isn’t optional for SMEs in 2023

Why should SMEs invest in business automation?

SMEs can especially benefit from automation for one simple reason: it can help you run your business far more efficiently. Small businesses can automate several time-consuming tasks such as report generation, thus freeing up time to pursue leads, sales, process or product improvements, or other aspects of the business that require a human element.

And as we’ve already seen from the first quarter of 2023, businesses have an ever-growing variety of new challenges to contend with. Between new technologies, evolving data and security laws, and an increasingly fragmented audience, any advantage that businesses can gain is an important one.

How can you use business automation in:

• Report generation

If you form part of your business’s leadership team, you likely know the struggle of receiving regular, accurate reporting from across your organisation. Reports are often tedious to put together, are prone to errors, and are likely not displayed in a simple, easy to understand format.

Business automation can eliminate these pain points. By having the reports designed based on the needs of those reading them, leadership teams spend significantly less time going through useless data until they find what they need. Automation also removes any risk of human error, and frees up those who would normally compile these reports to instead act upon the insights they provide.

• Inventory management

Working with a big variety of products? You can set up an automated inventory system that will keep track of products for you, inform you when you are running out, and monitor which products are selling well. Most modern retailers use a form of automated inventory management: it’s an excellent tool that can give you the opportunity to make business-critical decisions without the risk of error – and it can save your employees time in the day that could be spent working on actively driving the business goals.

• Know-your-customer and customer automation

With regulations for institutions such as banking, insurance, and financial services becoming increasingly stringent, automating KYC procedures that don’t require a human element is an excellent opportunity to increase your compliance efficiency and reduce the risk of losing new customers, especially if your compliance procedures have multi-step roles that could become irritating for the consumer. KYC and compliance procedures by their nature are heavily dependent on getting the right information at the right time, and by automating the process, you benefit from the security and peace of mind of knowing that there is very little possibility for error in an automated report.

• IT service desk

A sound IT infrastructure and good IT support is critical to the success of any organisation: just take a look at all the technology that has become an important part of the modern working environment, and with more in development and set to become an interesting element to the modern workplace.

As a result, your IT department should run like clockwork, and automating parts of your service desk to run without human interaction can really help streamline your operations. Whether it’s a chatbot that will answer your employees’ IT questions or talk them through the most common fixes, or an automation that will class and route incoming tickets to support personnel, automating your IT desk ensures no issue gets lost or overlooked. Automation allows your employees to tackle small matters themselves without requiring the presence of an IT support worker.

This is especially useful if your help desk frequently gets overwhelmed with tickets, and could use the help to determine which of them needs the highest priority.

• Customer loyalty management

If a big part of your organisation depends on repeat clients, and you have the opportunity to reward repeat customers, it can get tricky to keep track of the benefits that these clients accrue, and so automating your loyalty schemes, invoices, and repeat orders can really help build a closer relationship with your biggest customers, and allow you to make sure that their regular order is always in stock.

• Marketing

You can set up automated marketing messages and campaigns to run marketing messages across all channels, including email, websites, social media, and text messages to generate sales leads. While creating marketing content still needs a human touch, automating parts of the marketing process can really help you keep your business relevant. You can even automate a survey or feedback component that can give you extra insight into how your existing campaign is performing.

• Finance

From data capture to invoicing and approvals, the finance and accounting departments can greatly benefit from automation. By significantly reducing data errors and enhancing fraud control measures, automating financial reporting proves to be an excellent strategy for businesses aiming to free up time for other crucial tasks, such as financial analysis. This approach ultimately improves accuracy, efficiency, and overall performance.

• Onboarding

The onboarding procedures for new employees can be almost entirely automated, from filling out the initial contract paperwork to creating the necessary security credentials and supplying bank account details. If your business provides training sessions or handovers from previous employees, these appointments can also be automated through calendar integrations across the entire organisation.

This not only means that onboarding itself is completed quickly, but also ensures that everyone is kept up to date with the latest additions to the team. Furthermore, the manual strain of the onboarding process can be a daunting and long-winded process, which will lead to errors, so reducing the amount of paperwork and automating onboarding will definitely help save you time and make the onboarding process less difficult for both you and your new hire.