6 Business Processes You Should Automate in 2020

The rise of advanced computer software — especially solutions powered by AI and big data analysis — means more tools than ever can allow companies to automate tedious or repetitive business processes, increasing efficiency and discovering insights that human workers may miss.

A wide range of processes can be automated, and adopting these solutions can help your business guarantee consistency and free up valuable workers for tasks that require a human touch.

Here are six business processes that you can automate to improve efficiency, accuracy and productivity:

1. Marketing and Customer Support

Marketing is a key component for most companies — one that includes many different tasks that take time better spent elsewhere. For example, it’s possible to use tools to automate targeted customer emails and more efficiently nurture leads. Implementing business process automation can boost a company’s qualified leads significantly.

You can also automate elements of your customer support strategy. We know that customers hate waiting to speak with a representative, but it’s not always possible to have a customer support team that’s ready to field questions. As a solution, chatbots can answer simple queries while your customer service agents are busy. They can also pass along complex calls to human workers. This method ensures customers wait as little as possible.

These chatbots also provide better information to customer support reps. With technology like advanced sentiment analysis, chatbots can automatically analyze how a customer is feeling and what they want based on how they type. The bots then pass that information to customer service agents so that they can better prioritize customer needs and prepare to handle requests.

2. Applicant Screening

Talent searches can be long and difficult for any hiring team. It’s not unusual for these teams to sift through hundreds or even thousands of different candidates to find one with the right strengths for a given position.

This process takes a lot of time, eats up money and can result in your business losing out on top talent. Right now, unemployment is hovering just below 4 percent, and, on average, job-searchers are on the market for around a month and a half before they land a position. Therefore, to secure the best talent, your hiring team needs to move fast — especially if you’re looking for professionals with in-demand skills, like cybersecurity or AI development.

Continually improving applicant screening technology can help your hiring team sort out the best candidate for a specific position. These tools use advanced search algorithms to slim down the applicant pool for your hiring team, giving them more time to focus on candidates who have a real shot at being successful.

3. Training and Onboarding

Advanced, AI-powered training software can guide employees through learning the ins-and-outs of their position — their responsibilities, best practices and the necessary tools and software they’ll be using — even if there’s no team member available.

This tech means that experienced team members won’t need to find time in their day to onboard new staff. It’s also great for remote teams — hiring workers who live in different time zones or keep unusual schedules won’t slow down the training process. Whenever a new worker has some free time — even if no one is in the office or online to help — they can log in and start their training.

4. Financial Modeling

Automation solutions allow your company to improve its financial planning and scale your financial modeling strategy beyond what’s possible with your current tools.

Advanced planning tools take advantage of cutting-edge technology, like AI and big data analysis, to break down vast data sets and spot subtle correlations that human analysts may not find on their own. As a result, your business can gain access to a range of new insights and, potentially, more accurate financial forecasts.

5. Expense Tracking, Accounting

You can automate business processes, such as expense tracking, invoice processing and payroll, with the right tools. This technology can reduce the risk of error in data entry or repetitive processes that naturally occurs when you’re sending paychecks every two weeks or capturing and approving invoices.

Like other automation solutions, these tools can save employees time and money by freeing them from mundane tasks. For example, automated accounting solutions can reduce payroll processing costs by as much as 80 percent, according to experts.

6. Employee Scheduling

Automated tools can make it easier to optimize employee hours. If you hire part-time or hourly employees, and only need them to work for specific amounts of time each week, you can use automation software to maximize the efficiency of your scheduling.

You can use past information about work volume to know how many employees you’ll need to schedule and for how long, allowing you to increase the effectiveness of your schedule and give employees as much advance notice as possible. This solution is beneficial for employees, but also for employers who need to comply with predictive scheduling laws. Adopting this technology can result in significant savings and reduce the time you spend managing worker schedules.

Streamlining Business Processes With Automation

Advances in computer technology mean you can learn how to automate your business in new, innovative ways. With the right solution in place, it’s possible to streamline some or all of the processes involved in marketing, financial planning, scheduling and payroll. Automating these tasks can offer substantial benefits to your company — reducing costs and freeing up employees for the work that matters most.