The business owner’s list of “things to do” never ends. Time is always of the essence. So how do you create extra hours to tend to critical day-to-day tasks like marketing and staffing? Or even share moments with your family? Yes, family, you need to maintain that crucial balance too, or you risk losing yourself and losing everything.
Saving time is the only way to spare the extra you’ll need. And according to Deep Patel, a sure way to solve this problem is automation. This approach will help shed off the feeling that you need to oversee every operation in your firm because machines that you can trust have taken over humans who require supervision.
Patel insists that because your time is precious, certain routines are better and cheaper when automated. The truth is; your duties and goals will remain the same when you choose to incorporate automation into your company. All you have done is saved time and thousands of dollars by allowing technology handle most your daily office processes.
At firstamericamerchant.com, we love to mentor micro-business owners on the best business practices. We are even part of a merchant referral program—a group of online firms dedicated to ensuring every company finds a merchant account & processing solution. That said, here are some processes you should consider automating.
Payroll
An example of software you can use is Deluxe for your payroll activities. Payroll can be stressing and tedious, but Deluxe can help do away with errors and improve your financial security. Isn’t this proof enough that automation is beneficial?
Accounting
If you still doubt the power of automation then how about you try business tools like Quickbooks; which can help in mileage tracking and reporting expenses. It simplifies work for your accountant by doing all the heavy accounting work.
Marketing
Payroll & expense reports are not the only duties you should automate. According to the famous Forbes, “marketing is one area ripe for automation.”
A noteworthy example is MailChimp, a piece of tech that enables small businesses to abridge their email processes. For social media marketing, we have Hootsuite and Buffer that can help integrate all your social platforms in one place thus making managing them significantly easier. Hubspot is also an excellent and user-friendly email and social media marketing tech.
Other tools that simplify office duties are Quip and Doodle that streamline workflow, enhance team collaboration ensuring everybody is up to date.
Analyze your Business to see what duties you should automate
The wide range of possible automation may sometimes confuse the retailer. Plus you can’t just accept anything you meet or hear of. So how do you choose what to automate when?
This decision has to be rational; make yours based on the following questions:
- How much time will I save?
- How much does this automation impact positively on productivity?
- Does this automation save you some money?
- Does it make work easier for you?
Conclusion
Failing to automate will only slow you down and make competition unbearable for you. Even worse, it may drain you of all your energy, eat into your time and ruin your relationship with your family.