Time may be the greatest equalizer of all. No matter who you are or where you live, you have 24 hours each day to get everything done. And for busy employees, making the most of their on-the-clock time can feel like a juggling act.
As a business leader, you're well aware of the role time plays in keeping your brand competitive. The more efficiently your colleagues work through their to-do lists, the more productive you'll be overall. Yet it can be tough to figure out how to improve everyone's time management skills en masse.
One solution may be to leverage tools that allow you to automate repetitive responsibilities. For instance, do you have a team member who regularly copy-pastes and transfers client data manually? A more advanced customer relationship management system could do the same thing immediately, giving back time to your employees.
How much time can you save through automation? Research suggests that around 40% of a staffer's on-the-job time is devoted to repetitive work. Consequently, cutting that figure by just a few percentage points could have a seriously positive impact on productivity.
If you're still not sure that automation can work for your organization, read on. Below are several specific reasons automation can be the answer to improving efficiency levels across your workforce.
1. Automation frees employees to skip mundane tasks.
Every employee has regular assignments that could fall under the category of "mundane." These tasks could include anything from marketers engaged in social listening to customer service representatives typing notes in two places. Over time, repetitive duties can begin to seem so cumbersome that workers become tempted to put them on the backburner. Or, they decide to stop doing them altogether.
Gather your team for an honest brainstorming session and find out which lower-level, monotonous tasks they do regularly. Then, consider if automation software, processes, or tools could help eliminate some of those duties. Streamlining just a few tasks for each of your coworkers could free them up substantially.
2. Automation can give stakeholders the ability to self-serve 24/7.
You have plenty of stakeholders who rely on your company for service and support. These include employees, vendors, and customers. What if you could use automation to give them a better experience with your brand, all without requiring a human interface? It's possible by automating a variety of touchpoints.
For employees, try implementing HR-related software tools that promote self-service: Give workers access to register for and manage their small business 401k plan. Provide vendors with a secure login to their account so they can pay invoices automatically without dealing with paper. Use an AI-enhanced chatbot system as an online 24/7 customer service portal. The possibilities are endless, and you'll reduce part of your staff's time burdens.
3. Automation reduces human error inefficiencies.
Though not necessarily discussed all the time, human errors can eat up a lot of time. When an employee makes a foreseeable misstep, the misstep has to be rectified. Plus, the misstep may result in other workers being brought in to solve new problems.
Consider an employee who sends an outrageously high bill to a client in error. The client may be angered by the artificially inflated invoice and call the CEO. The CEO in turn has to take time to calm the client and perhaps offer a discount as a remedy.
Though not all mistakes can be avoided with automation, some can. Look for areas where automated software can remove a high degree of potential mishaps. You'll appreciate not having major headaches or being pulled away from other tasks because of a crisis.
4. Automation allows your sales team to spend time with clients.
It's a disheartening statistic: The average sales team member spends just 36% of the week actually selling. What happens the rest of the time? As you can probably imagine, the representative is engaged in busy work that's not close to customer-facing or profit-producing.
You spend a lot of time finding the most talented B2B sales professionals to work on behalf of your brand. Why limit them by forcing them to recreate tasks continuously and needlessly, like sending emails that could be automated from templates?
Check out the many types of sales software tools available to see where automation could be a boon for your company's sellers. Then, train your salespeople on how to become more proficient by utilizing the software. You can expect an initial learning curve which should be followed by a period of productivity improvement.
5. Automation can take away the need for a new hire.
When you carve out time for your people, you may open the door to do more with fewer employees. In other words, if you're waffling on whether or not you need to bring someone new on board, contemplate automation first.
Could automating processes across the board reduce your need to bring on another full-time worker? If so, automation could be an excellent investment.
Even if you discover you still need extra hands, you might be able to save time and money. Hiring a part-time person, temporary worker, or independent contractor could increase your productivity and bandwidth faster than bringing in a full-timer.
So far, scientists haven't been able to engineer time machines just yet. That's okay. You can recapture lost time for your business and colleagues in surprisingly simple ways with automating repetitive processes.
