5 Ways IT Automation Helps Businesses Run More Efficiently

July 31, 2019

Administrative tasks, HR processes, invoicing and payments, security and maintenance. What do these tasks have in common?

The majority of them are extremely tiresome and time-consuming. They require that your staff to be consistently available in order to carry them out on a continuous basis.

Automation could be the best fix to this problem as it can help you in saving a lot of your precious time. You can leverage these tools to give prompt service which in turn can let you win your customers' hearts.

5 ways IT automation can optimize your business

Business operations automation is an emerging IT trend which is becoming increasingly popular among organizations to reduce the mundane, time-consuming, and repetitive business processes in order to boost efficiency, minimize slip-ups, and let employees pay attention to the matters of higher significance.

The major reason behind this transformation is the advent of advanced digital platforms, software solutions, and tools power packed with amazing technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), predictive analytics, and machine learning (ML).

Slack QuoteEntrepreneurs leverage professional developers for building efficient and reliable software solutions in accordance to their specific business requirements. Some prefer to have custom software built depending upon their individual choices, needs, resources available. Business intelligence software is capable of more than completing the mundane tasks of day-to-day operations, but can encourage data-driven decision-making for business optimization and help businesses discover new insights.

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Embrace these tools with the understanding and thorough analysis of your current workflow to better realize how you can leverage automation tools and solutions. It’s equally important to involve your team and appoint business analysts who can recognize the bottlenecks from your current workflow. Eventually, you’ll be able to spot the integral processes which can be automated to streamline the complex operations and accomplish them quickly and efficiently.

It’s important to understand that not everything can be automated. While we all wish we could automate everything and spend the rest of our lives on the beach, it’s not completely possible. Below are five ways that business processes can be automated in order to eliminate the manual intervention and reap rich rewards.

1. Meetings and appointments

In order to make your business accessible and reachable, it's important for you to fulfil commitments which can be achieved by successfully participating in meetings with your customers as well as stakeholders and other business associates.

Scheduling meetings and handling multiple appointments can be one of the trickiest jobs for your staff. Slip-ups happen and meetings can be completely forgotten.

Would want to miss a meeting that could have turned into a lucrative deal? To be safe, take help from some of the best free online scheduling tools that can keep you informed.

You can also leverage different tech tools such as online calendars and meeting apps. With the help of these platforms, you can easily update your availability and internal work schedule.

2. Recruitment, HR processes, and onboarding platforms

The entire hiring and onboarding process can be quite tedious and lengthy.

You can simplify this domain with the help of automation tools meant to schedule interviews with shortlisted candidates. Also, AI-powered assessment platforms can help you in filtering relevant applicants which can be the perfect fit to the specific role.

You can also leverage cloud-based workflow software solutions for HR process automation. These tools can handle with a plethora of vacation requests and help recruiters deal with salary changes and employee on-boarding efficiently.

Checking attendance, computing leave benefits, tracking employee records, etc. are some other HR tasks that can be easily automated in order to provide recruiters with enough time to perform other important jobs.

Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and recruitment solutions can help hiring managers to track the extensive pool of available candidates. These tools can simplify and streamline the entire recruiting and onboarding process which will let you leave a positive first impression on the newly-hired candidates.

View the Easiest-to-Use Applicant Tracking Software →

3. CRM solutions and virtual assistants

Your targeted customers and prospects are extremely valuable and, in the end, it's all about meeting their specific requirements. Better leverage intuitive tech-driven CRM (customer relationship management) solutions that can help you with seamless pipeline management.

These tools might seem expensive, but in reality you can choose the best CRM platform for your startup or SMB without burning a big hole in your pocket. This platform would serve as a one-stop solution to all your needs.

You can automate customer information collection and keep it well-organized with the help of this solution. Also, it will help you with following up with quality prospects by sending them automatic emails or reminders.

View the Easiest-to-Use CRM Software →

CRM software can work to target quality leads, nurture them through the funnel and maximizing the chances of conversions. Moreover, AI-powered virtual assistants and chatbots are the new age trending tools to boost the customer experience by providing them with prompt and reliable support. 24/7 support is one of the leading demands of modern connected customers.

Modern Consumer Demands-1

Consider these options and optimize the customer satisfaction to build brand awareness and win customers' loyalty.

4. Automated payments and invoicing

Preparing bills and making payments is another tedious task. Done manually, these tasks can produce mistakes and inefficiencies.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) could be the solution as it can automate repetitive tasks such as feeding data into the legacy systems, going through attachments, and maintaining spreadsheets. With the help of invoicing and billing solutions, you can send automatic reminders and make payments on the fly.

These tools will not only trim down your employees time, but will also make sure that you are never late when it comes to making a payment. Also, it will optimize your internal workflow.

If you need to reimburse travel expenses to your workers one of these platforms can help you with scraping information from receipts and track travel claims. These software solutions also have the ability to automatically categorize different expenses and connect with the concerned banks to disburse the requested amount.

5. Security automation

Your organization has a plethora of confidential data that is stored in computer systems used by your staff. Make sure to implement cloud security to keep the data safe and lock devices to avoid hacking and data breaches.

Cybercriminals can use mysterious apps or other available tools that can dig out your company’s confidential information and credentials, but cloud-driven security infrastructure can keep all your data safe and intact at one place. Also, you can implement authorized access to make it accessible to only professionals who are genuinely permitted.

Security software solutions can recognize any suspicious activity happening on your systems and block the user immediately. Additionally, conditional access automation can give you an opportunity to provide internal resources with restricted access to data based on multiple criteria.

Automated IT operations increase efficiency

IT professionals have to cater to complaints and requirements on a daily basis. Implementing automated operations can save all employees time that could be spent more productively.

Embracing automated platforms that can do the server monitoring, software or In order to spare them from executing these mundane processes you can embrace automated platforms that can do the server monitoring, software or hardware installation and configuring, file as well as folder management, etc. It will let your IT team handle multiple requests simultaneously and fulfill diverse requirements.

Business process automation isn't a magic wand with which you can easily figure out solutions to complex problems. But it has the potential to transform your business workflow by optimizing each and every process.

Want to keep learning? Read all about office automation trends! 

5 Ways IT Automation Helps Businesses Run More Efficiently There are processes within business operations that can take a little more time than any of us would like to admit. Learn how automation software and tools can change that. https://learn.g2.com/hubfs/iStock-958125096.jpg
Anubhuti Shrivastava Anubhuti Shrivastava is a content crafter at Arkenea and Benchpoint. She is passionate about writing articles on topics related to design and the software development industry. https://learn.g2.com/hubfs/Anubhuti%20Shrivastava.png

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