How to automate repetitive tasks and grow your productivity
As a business owner, you know that taking care of mundane tasks can feel like an endless cycle. Doing the same thing repeatedly is time-consuming — leaving you with little energy to focus on the most important aspects of your business.
This is why you should automate your repetitive tasks. In this guide, you’ll learn what task automation is. You’ll also get a detailed look into the benefits of automation and learn what to begin with when automating tasks.
Let’s get started.
What is task automation?
Task automation involves using software to simplify routine tasks by creating efficient workflows.
Whether you’re handling accounting responsibilities or marketing tasks, you can apply task automation to any area of your business.
The idea is to lessen your manual labor by setting up automated operations that handle these repetitive tasks behind the scenes.
From bots to sophisticated enterprise software with AI-powered analytics, there’s a broad range of automation tools available today.
How does it help you?
When you leverage these automation tools, you increase the productivity of your workflows. Process automation also removes the busywork component from your business, which left unchecked, leads to burnout and low employee morale.
Now you free up your employees’ time for more value-added activities and innovation.
What’s more, you channel your other resources more effectively. Let’s look at some more benefits of task automation.
Benefits of task automation
Increases your efficiency
Aside from saving precious time on tedious tasks, you streamline your workflow.
Through the automation of repetitive tasks, your team can do more in less time. Remember that efficiency isn’t just about speed — it’s about making every second count.
Automating tasks in your business gives you control as you set up processes to audit and refine your duties as you grow over time.
After you first automate repetitive tasks, the system will help identify broken or unnecessary gaps and mistakes in your workflow.
Reduces human error
Even the most skilled workers slip up from time to time, especially when doing the same tasks repeatedly. Our findings show that stress and fatigue contribute to 48.8% of human errors.
These oversights can cost your business substantial time and effort to rectify. That’s where task automation comes in.
Automation of repetitive tasks ensures consistency and transparency by relying on a clearly defined configuration. It reduces errors during processes like data entry, ensuring that you don’t miss critical steps or input incorrect information.
Improved employee satisfaction
Our research indicates that automation makes 89% of full-time workers more satisfied with their job.
This is unsurprising, since repetitive tasks eat up functions, slow communication, and cause burnout.
As mentioned, when you automate repetitive tasks, your employees can focus on more challenging, innovative work while also communicating better with their teams. This allows them to grow and be open to more opportunities within the workplace.
Enhances your customer experience
Choosing to automate repetitive tasks leaves time for employees to solve complex customer issues.
With properly configured workflow management, task automation alerts you about customer issues, so you can handle requests promptly instead of having to wait for someone to be on site.
With faster response times and consistent service, automation enhances your overall customer experience and strengthens loyalty.
Additionally, when you automate repetitive tasks, you make your customer’s journey more accessible and personalized. For example, CRM task automation maps out your client’s entire business process to make their journey more efficient.
Automating tasks: What to start with
When you automate repetitive tasks, it’s crucial to focus on the right ones.
As a rule of thumb, start with tasks that consume the most time, like invoice processing, data entry, or appointment scheduling.
Here are some of the best candidates regarding the automation of repetitive tasks.
Managing your sales and marketing leads
When you automate repetitive tasks in sales and lead management, you improve the efficiency of your sales funnel.
Web-to-lead forms, for example, capture visitors from your website to take some of the burden of prospecting off your plate.
Moreover, automation software sorts your incoming leads based on criteria such as location or product interest, and then assigns them to the appropriate sales rep.
Additionally, automated follow-up emails maintain engagement with your prospects, increasing conversion rates and ensuring that no leads fall through the cracks.
Data and information collection
Task automation can vastly improve your data collection process.
Instead of manually entering data into your systems, automation software gathers and analyzes information for you.
It pulls data from various sources, validates it, and transfers it into your databases.
The accuracy this provides, combined with the time it saves, makes automation critical for any data-driven organization.
Email communication
Email automation is a powerful tool to streamline communication between you and your leads and customers.
You can use pre-set email templates for regular communications such as:
- Newsletters.
- Confirmation emails.
- Responses to frequently asked questions.
Moreover, you can trigger automated emails based on specific events or customer behavior. This ensures timely communication with your target audience and their place in the customer journey.
Reporting
Reports are vital for tracking progress and making informed decisions. But think of all the time you spend and the errors you make when you create manual reports from scratch.
Luckily, you can automate repetitive tasks using software that generates real-time reports based on your specified metrics. Even better, the data is always accurate and up to date.
Additionally, you can schedule these at regular intervals and have them delivered straight to your inbox.
Employee scheduling
Employee scheduling is complex, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. Task automation software can automatically generate schedules, taking into account variables like employee availability and shift preferences.
It takes things even further by notifying employees of their schedules via email or mobile notifications. This saves administrative time and enhances transparency and employee satisfaction.
Good automation software also manages:
- Shift swaps.
- Leave requests.
- Overtime calculations.
How to automate repetitive tasks with Method
Method is the perfect solution to take routine tasks off your plate and free up valuable time. With automated processes that run seamlessly in the background, you and your team can focus on more strategic initiatives. Here’s how.
Method’s powerful two-way sync with QuickBooks and Xero eliminates double-data entry, so you can say goodbye to inaccuracies in your database. Your customer details, invoices, and payments are all updated in real-time.
With web-to-lead forms, capture leads directly from your website and funnel them into your sales pipeline. These forms are customizable, so you can capture the information that’s most important to your business. When a lead submits the form, all their information becomes instantly available in your CRM.
What’s more, Method makes sure you never overlook any leads by automating follow-ups. Through consistent engagement with them, you have fewer chances of losing out on opportunities and a higher likelihood of closing deals.
Recap: How to automate your way to stress-free days
Method helps you let go of the reins and still sleep at night. It’s the best software to automate repetitive tasks that are necessary for your business, but take up valuable time. Some of Method’s powerful features include:
- Powerful, two-way QuickBooks and Xero sync to eliminate manual entry.
- Web-to-lead forms to speed up lead conversion.
- Automated follow-ups to ensure prospects stay caught up.
Now you can put key people where they need to be and let Method handle the rest.
Find your confidence in the chaos with a free trial of Method.
Image credit: Dragana Gordic via Adobe Stock