Automating office tasks gradually saves an organization thousands of hours, allowing employees to focus on higher-level tasks that result in a greater return on investment. Automation also ensures tasks are not forgotten and deadlines aren’t missed. Automating certain tasks results in standardization in the quality of output. Here are 10 routine office tasks that are prime candidates for automation.
1. Data Back-Up
Backing up data is an important task in the modern-day organization, both for security and regulatory reasons. In fact, you probably need to back up the most important files in more than one cloud storage service. Doing this manually every day can be time-consuming, especially with other administrative tasks on your hands. You can set up backups to happen at a certain time every day. Some cloud storage services offer automated back-ups as part of the package.
2. Reception
If your business handles a lot of walk-in visitors, you can use a visitor management system to route them to the correct office or desk. Such a system ensures visitors do not queue at a physical reception desk and then queue again to get the help or service they want. The system may also print out the approximate amount of time they will wait before being served. Using the system will allow you to collect data on the average waiting time for your clients, which is a driver of customer satisfaction.
3. Social Media Posts
If you are a B2C business that relies on social media presence to grow the brand and revenue, you need a social media strategy. The strategy will involve creating, curating, and sharing content online. Automation tools help you schedule your posts and distribute them simultaneously to multiple platforms, thus saving you time. You can set aside a time block to create a week’s worth of content and schedule it to go live at different times in the week. It will help you create consistency, which is crucial in audience building.
You can also use scheduling tools to manage your blog by creating content in bulk but then publishing it over time.
4. CRM and Marketing Automation
Lead nurturing is important for growth in business. How does your business follow up on contacts made with prospective clients? CRM automation tools can help your business convert leads into clients and maintain existing ones. You can set up customized emails to be automatically sent to your mailing lists when you have a new offer, when subscriptions expire, or when people visit a certain page on your website.
5. Finance Desks Tasks
Your organization can save a lot of time and become more organized by automating such things as payroll management. For instance, if wages to employees are based on several variables, you can set up a system that ticks off the various metrics and automatically determines what each person should be paid. It should also automate the calculation of deductibles. Your organization can also set-up automated payments of recurring utilities.
6. Online Customer Service
Setting up chatbots on your website helps to reduce the demands on your call center. In fact, many clients now prefer not to call the customer service center if they can quickly find the information they need from your FAQ page or a chatbot. A chatbot is available throughout the day and can serve multiple purposes. For instance, you can administer a customer satisfaction survey at the end of a chat.
7. Calendar
When you are a manager, you’ll likely to have dozens of meetings with colleagues throughout the week. It can be really time-consuming when you have to check your physical diary before setting up a meeting. To avoid this, you can share your calendar with colleagues so they can pick a time slot where you are free. These calendar options sync with your other productivity tools such as email. You’ll receive reminders of meetings so that you do not miss appointments.
8. Recruitment Automation
What happens when you publicize an opening and get thousands of applications? Spending tens of hours going through all applications that come is not efficient. Instead, you could use a recruitment tool that automatically picks details from applicants’ resumes. The tool helps you to create a shortlist of people who meet certain qualifications. This not only saves time, but it adds to the objectivity of your recruitment process.
9. Social Media Listening Tools
Listening tools are a great way to keep up with what people are saying about your company but in an efficient way. They can compile your mentions into one report to cut the amount of time you use on monitoring. You can also add other keywords to track conversations in a given industry or to keep up with new trends.
10. Email Sorting Automation
Employees spend more than three hours every day just going through emails. You could become more effective by automatically sorting your emails. Filter your incoming mails so that you respond to related emails at the same time. You could also sort them in order of urgency.
11. Filling Out Forms Online
You may not realize it but you probably spend a lot of time filling out the same information on multiple forms online. Using RoboForm, you could safely back up your information so that it automatically fills out whenever you are signing up for something or making a purchase. An alternative to RoboForm would be the Chrome browser.
12. Proposal Creation Automation
If you had to create proposals from scratch each time you are pitching for business, you will limit yourself too much. You will spend too many hours doing some very repetitive work. Using an application such as PandaDoc, you can create templates for your proposals, which allows you to put together an application much more quickly. You can also have people from various departments working together on a proposal simultaneously.
Automate with Transcendent
As your business considers ways to improve efficiency through automation, reach out to Transcendent Software for consultation services on the right tech tools to use. Transcendent Software is an IT services company that powers businesses to make the best out of their IT architecture.