What Parts of Your Business Processes Should You Automate to Scale?

Imagine staring at a mountain of tasks that just keeps repeating itself – data entry, scheduling meetings, sending follow-up emails, accounting, and even project deliveries. They drain your time, sap your energy, and leave you with that feeling of emptiness – yearning for the summit, that zone of high productivity and innovation.

But you can’t quite reach it, because you (and your team) are always bugged down with repetitive work you have to do to keep your company running.

Now Imagine staring at the same set of functions and seeing as it all smoothly flows on its own – each department carrying out its functions like clockwork, and you barely lift a finger throughout the whole process.

All because you introduced one principle into your business;

Automation.

When people hear of automation, they think of software, platforms, etc. But it’s really a question of identifying a lag in your business processes, and finding solutions to handle those tasks efficiently, with minimal effort, as quickly as possible.

Studies have shown that by automating just 30% of repetitive tasks, businesses can achieve a 20% productivity boost. Think how massively that could improve your business performance. Automation is no longer a luxury. It’s a necessity if you want to take your business to the next level.

But here’s a kicker, not all your business processes should be automated. Matter of fact automating the wrong processes could cost you a lot – especially time and money.

In this post, you will find out once and for all, what you should automate in your business if you want to scale faster, as well as what to avoid automating to save you time and resources.

How does automation help with scaling my business?

Whether you're a bootstrapped startup hustling from your kitchen table or a well-established company finding it difficult to grow past your current level, business process automation (BPA) might just be the 1 ingredient you need for smooth operations, happier employees, and customers that won’t just leave (bet you love those).

Picture this:

• Your project team, collaborates with ease, hitting deadlines and delivering projects that exceed expectations.
• Your marketing team, freed from manual marketing and content scheduling, generates viral campaigns.
• Your sales reps, unburdened by endless paperwork, are closing deals at lightning speed.

All because they have access to the right tools and your processes and workflows, as smooth as a well-oiled machine.

To discover more about the direct benefits automation has on your business and how it can help you grow exponentially, InfoLobby reveals more about that in this post.

But with so many exciting tools and technologies available, it's easy to get overwhelmed. The biggest issue is where do you start?

What to automate and what not to automate

As mentioned earlier, making the right decision on which process of your business should be automated can be the difference between effectively scaling your business and generating more revenue, or sinking your favourite ship – one you’ve poured so many irredeemable resources into.

Let’s find out what processes in your business you should automate today, and which ones to leave out.

15 Parts of Your Business You Should Automate to Scale Faster

Process Automation

1. Automate Your HR Processes

If you have a small team, you, as the entrepreneur, probably take on the human resources (HR) function.

With the help of HR automation tools, you can streamline your HR processes – anything from hiring to onboarding, to employee tracking and management. It’s almost like having a human resources team alongside you.

Best of all, all of your employees have access to the HR tool to check;

• Up-to-date information,
• Training materials, and
• leave requests without relying on the human element.

But, say you’re an established enterprise with numerous employees. While using HR tools is beneficial, having an HR team is a necessity. Here’s how to automate HR processes for medium and large organisations;

2. Employee Onboarding

There are several ways to automate employee onboarding process. One way is to use employee onboarding tools.

Another way is workflow automation software – to automate many steps of the employee onboarding process, such as training new hires, sending reminders, connecting them with colleagues, and more.

Here are some steps you can take to automate your employee onboarding process:

1. Send a welcome email with an explanation of company perks and benefits.
2. Share some forms that need to be filled out.
3. Send employee contracts and other documents and request signature.
4. Arrange for a welcome package to be delivered to the new talent.

You can use workflow automation platforms to create a structured experience that guides your new hires through every step of your onboarding program without any manual effort.

Check out InfoLobby’s Employee Asset Tracker in the App market.

3. Task and Workflow Management

Using automation to manage tasks and workflows doesn't have to be a complex dance. You can start by identifying repetitive, rule-based tasks within your core workflows.

For instance;

You can create custom flows that eliminate busy work and repetitive tasks;

“when that action happens, do this” →  execute Instant and powerful calculation fields and automations.

Imagine automating workflows like time tracking, invoices, CRM, ticketing support, CMS, assets, projects, sales, accounting, remote office, and databases. 

Having the ability to easily create custom widgets of your data from any table, giving your team the perfect overview of the action. Drag and drop fields to make relationships, spaces, tables, automations, and set permission to craft the perfect custom app.

Enabling your business to handle tasks like clockwork, freeing your team to focus on the human touch – creative problem-solving, strategic decision-making, and nurturing client relationships

To top it all off, you can easily import your data from services like Podio, Notion, CSV files, and databases, or start from scratch and make something new. 

4. Customer Relationship

There are several ways to automate customer relationship management in a business. The most popular way is to use CRM tools to;

1. Automate repetitive tasks such as lead scoring, data management, and customer support, increasing your operational efficiency and reducing manual errors
2. Streamline customer interactions: For instance, you can use CRM automation to assign tasks to admins in charge of the next step in the process, notify team members when a task is completed, and generate automated reports to gain valuable insights into customer behaviour and sales performance.
3. From the data acquired, you can use AI and analytics to optimize prices, generate dynamic pricing models, and provide personalized recommendations and support to customers.

4. Automate invoicing: You can use a CRM automation tool to generate invoices automatically based on order data.

Accounting and financial processes

5. Automate Your Payroll

Staying on top of payments is crucial in building a team of dedicated workers. No one enjoys waiting for their paycheck – especially not your employees.

With drag-and-drop features, custom fields, and so on, InfoLobby enables you easily automate your employee payroll. Additionally, you assign these roles to other admins in your organization.

6. Setup Accounting And Bookkeeping

Simply, tracking your financials can be a handful – especially if you still use those crusty spreadsheets.

Please get yourself a dedicated accounting tool like QuickBooks Online to streamline your finances – with automated processes to easily record and categorize transactions, generate financial statements, and even sync your bank statements.

Additionally, you can integrate with your automation tools, making it easy to stay on top of your finances and manage your business.

But, say you run a small business and want all your processes in one place, InfoLobby offers you minimal options

7. Automate Your Expenses, Savings, And Investments

It’s vital at this point to mention personal finances.

Making really good money is one thing, managing your finances is another. That’s where automation comes in.

A great way to automate this is by setting up systems that automatically manage your finances and moves money between bank accounts.

This includes automating the following:

• Income: Withdraw a percentage of your revenue from your business bank account when cash is collected from clients.
• Expenses: Set up bill pay or autopay, so you never have to worry about loan or credit card payments.
• Savings: Withdraw a percentage of your income from your checking account every time you get paid.
• Investments: Invest a percentage of your income into retirement and investment accounts, so your money can make money.

By applying Ramit’s wisdom on finance automation, you will automatically pay yourself first, never forget a bill, and make better financial decisions.

8. Marketing Automation

This entails using software to automate repetitive marketing tasks, in order to save time and resources while improving the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.

 Here are some ways to automate marketing activities:

1. Email marketing automation: Triggering emails based on actions, such as webinar sign-up confirmations or abandoned basket notifications. Email drip workflows that send content at set intervals. Delivering content or requested information after filling out a form.
2. Social media automation: Scheduling social media posts in advance, automating reporting, and monitoring social media messages, mentions, and comments.
3. Digital advertising automation: Pulling in data from email marketing, social media, digital advertising, and your website, then using automation to segment your contacts, personalize your messages, schedule marketing campaigns, and create stronger customer experiences.
4. Internal automation: Automating internal marketing tasks such as lead scoring, lead nurturing, and lead qualification. Hubspot explains it brilliantly here.

Marketing automation can help businesses streamline their marketing efforts and improve their ROI.

However, it is important to bear in mind that marketing automation should not replace the human touch. Recent spike in technology has been met with increased (in some cases transformed) consumer expectations. Therefore, it is important to balance automation with personalization and human interaction.

9. Sales Automation

Depending on how your marketing structure, chances are you will have a sales team that gets funneled prospects (leads) consistently. This can be either too little or too much – leading to your team always being overwhelmed, or the company being forced to always hire more salespeople.

This is easily tracked and controlled by automation.

To automate sales in your organisation, you can use sales automation tools that help streamline the sales process, freeing up time for your team to focus on other important tasks.

These tools help with appointment scheduling, lead generation, customer relationship management, and more.

What not to Automate

Having gone through all that needs automation, some operations don’t demand automation, like;

• Short-term Projects: Since automation requires additional investment and planning, it’s not recommended for a short-term project where features must be implemented quickly or will be deactivated after a specific amount of time.
• Unstable Systems: Automating something that undergoes frequent changes will lead to a lot of overheads just to update the existing scripts. Hence, it is also not advisable to automate features that are subject to major changes or still in the process of being developed.
• Unpredictable dynamic data: Imagine you're using a computer program, and it needs information from another source. If that source sends different types of information each time, the program gets confused because it can't predict what's coming. So, the program won't know what to look for or check.

It's like trying to solve a puzzle when someone keeps changing the pieces you're supposed to use!

Don’t automate just for the sake of automating!

Automation can support many business objectives, including;

• Cost reduction,
• Time-saving,
• End-user experience,
• Always-available, and
• Innovation.

Before deciding whether to automate or not, it is important to consider factors such as;

• Complexity,
• Cost-effectiveness,
• human interaction,
• Adaptability,
• Resistance to change, and
• Legal requirements.

The decision should align with the specific needs and objectives of your organization or business.

Conclusion

Depending on the kind of company you run, you may find yourself using multiple tools for multiple functions. What’s worse is you have to duct-tape (integrate) all of them together – risking sensitive company information, network issues, platform downtimes, etc.

All of which negatively impact your business flow, ultimately costing you customers.

That’s why InfoLobby was built. You can mould it into whatever you want, to handle any sort of workflow operation you need in your business.

Here’s a quick summary of what you can achieve using InfoLobby