What is business automation?
This is the use of advanced technology to automate various business processes with the goal of increasing productivity, reducing cost and optimizing performance.
Today’s business environment is demanding and overwhelming to say the least, automating repetitive business processes saves time and increases productivity.
57% of companies have not recognized the potential advantages of automation.
This is a huge gap considering the rapid technological advancements that have taken place over the last decade. This is an increasingly digital landscape and as an expert service professional you must rise to the challenge and engage with your potential clients in new and relevant ways.
Scale your business, not your costs.
Automation not only involves using technology but also involves creating templates for emails, onboarding, design and even customer relations. Be guaranteed that technology will make the processes efficient and save you time. You are probably wondering it’s too much softwares and you can’t learn them all. Worry not that they are all user friendly and most are free.
So what can you automate in your expert service professional business?
Email Marketing.
Email marketing is essential in your business. Most people may argue that email marketing continues to lose its viability, that is not the case people reply to emails from people they know. Email is the number one channel of communication between professionals, so yes they do check their emails every morning, and yes they saw your advertisement about God knows what and yes they chose to scroll down because they even lack the strength to unsubscribe.
But they did open the email from [email protected]. A business partner.
We want to put our effort into activities that provide value and achieve results. So there is no point in shooting emails into inboxes cluttering their emails, you want to be strategic. Once you have a good list you will need to consider email automation. Try Mailchimp for free.
Standard Operating Procedures
These are ready to use templates that will save you time. This includes design templates, onboarding procedures, staffing, responding to customer service and accounting. Having these set up earlier in the business will save you a lot of time in the long run. As you grow these standard operating procedures grow with you so all you need to do is update. Like a system update. Fun and easy.
Customer Relationship Management
Nurturing customer relationships is very crucial as an expert professional and what better way than to leverage powerful automation tools like HubSpot. A CRM platform that has all the integrations you need for marketing, sales, content management and customer service.
And it’s free.
Outsource repetitive tasks to a Virtual Assistant.
You are a business owner and you certainly don’t have the time to be doing repetitive tasks, leverage the use of inexpensive labor and free your time.
Project Management
When I hear project management I see myself in a grey business skirt suit and heels with a clipboard and pen barking orders and ticking my to do list lol. You know you can do that online, you can have a task board assign it to various people in your team, even color code, set timelines and track what’s going on at the comfort of your home office. Try click up it’s free.
Scheduling
This is the easiest part in automation no business professional should lack. Making it easy for you to meet and connect with other professionals will gain you more business. Calendly stands out with this one because it allows you to share your calendar with the times you are free and they can choose according to their availability. This automatically adds to your calendar and you get an email notification about it.
Passwords
I wouldn’t want to leave this one unattended. You probably have a million passwords by now, saving these passwords in Google is just magic. You suddenly need to log in to an account you created a month ago and then boom Google automatically pops in your username and password and you are in. I am a big Google fan.
Leverage the power of AI.
Artificial Intelligence is the future.
Automation is a long term strategy, you can’t go automating everything all at once. The first step is figuring out where your business is at and what are some of the inefficiencies and how you can use automation to streamline processes.
The real flex though is having one central place with all these automations. And that is Vendasta. This is an all in one platform selling to local businesses.
Get the agency management software that has marketing automation, CRM, task management, billing and fulfilment. And to top it all, have a client brandable portal that lets your clients see everything all in one place. It is pretty fascinating. Check out Vendasta