Many marketing forecasts identify automation as one of the best things businesses can do right now and for various reasons. And if you think about it, it just makes sense—we move in a highly digitized world where information comes at a breakneck speed and where doing tasks in the shortest possible time ever is not only rewarded but also revered. 

Organisations cite automation as their “most up-to-date approach for innovation”, according to Smartbridge.

Although this heavy reliance on technology concerns many people (there is a growing assumption that automation will eventually replace human labourers), automation actually seeks not to boot humans out of work but make their actual work even more productive. It plays a crucial role in the improvement of work in general, as automation generally frees people from doing mindless, repetitive, and low value work; and the available time can now be reserved for more in-depth, creative thinking that drives scalability and benefits the brand or company in the long run.

Here’s how to automate your business to drive more business growth in 2023:

1. Understand how automation can help YOUR business.

We’d say that the first step to every technological integration attempt would be this: a complete understanding of the systems you’re eyeing for your business. And automation is no exception. The goal here is to use automation to help simplify some of your business areas—not make it complicated. And what better way to make sure you’re down the right path than by making sure that you and your team understand what automation is, why it is needed by your company, and its benefits. Although automation can be beneficial to many areas of a business, it is also possible that not all aspects of your business need to be automated. And that's fine, too. 

To give you a quick rundown, here are some known and compelling benefits of automation:

• higher productivity
• minimises human errors
• reduced operating cost
• streamlines team processes for better operational efficiency
• increased profitability in the long run
• better employee morale

A better understanding of automation—and how this impacts the aspects of your business—gives you greater control over this technology. Remember to make it work for you and not the other way around.

2. Determine which tasks to automate. 

The next step is to determine exactly what to automate. The rule of thumb is to focus on what aspects bring the most value to your business and see if there’s a way to simplify this process even further. Then, pinpoint the repetitive tasks; there’s a chance for these repetitive tasks to be simplified even further with the help of the right automation tools. Next, determine where the majority of the data is being handled; here, automation can be helpful in minimising the occurrence of human errors in order to make sure that the outputs are as reliable as possible. Automation can gather all structured and unstructured data to help sort everything, especially for broader sets of data that humans cannot handle by themselves. 

Below, you can find some tasks—divided per functional areas—that you can begin to automate:

Lead and Sales. Assigning prospects to team members, marking Sales journeys, following up with Leads, providing free content and capturing Lead data once visitor’s sign up, etc.

Customer Service. Chatbots, “Contact Us” buttons, creating appointments, sending promotional emails, etc.

Office Management. Sending and receiving documents within the organisation, instant messaging apps, monitoring and controlling data exchanges in the company, storing documents and marketing materials, etc.

3. Choose automation tools. 

Now that you know which tasks to automate, you can now decide on the tools that you’d need to make it happen. With a myriad of automation tools in the market today, each one promising to be the very “best” within their niches, things could get a little confusing. But like always, it will depend on the needs of the company and your team. Here are some questions to ask yourself so you could choose the right automation tools:

• Which teams need the automation technology? Does it require training?
• What is your budget for the automation integration?
• When will the maintenance schedules be (and carried out by whom)?
• Is there integrated support or training from developers?
• Are the tools compatible with your existing SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)? And if not, what can you do to ensure that it aligns?

Additionally, try to look for tools that offer free or trial versions. Most of these tools have limited features but will give you a good gauge of how it looks and whether your team can eventually learn to use it. 

4. Track automation results. 

Lastly, make sure you have "targets" to ensure that you’re hitting goals with your automation initiatives. It’s good that most automation software nowadays is also developed with its own analytics capabilities, making pinpointing areas for improvement, as well as growth, easier for users. If you don’t track results from your automation endeavours, it'll be hard to know how effective it is for you. 

Automation allows you to take control of how you do business. 

It gives your teams room to focus on the more important aspects of their work, based on the underlying idea that with more free time, teams can focus on wider business or brand strategies that can ultimately (and positively) impact the business in the long run.

Knowing what to automate for your business can be confusing. Our marketing team at Amber Creative can help. Send us a message today to know how!