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5 Ways to Implement Your Business Automation And Outsourcing Now
When you’re at the helm of a growing business, your expanding business processes can quickly become more than you can handle with the resources you currently have. At that point, you can either panic or turn to solutions like business automation and outsourcing.
In its pure form “automation” means there’s no human intervention whatsoever. You simply let the computer take care of it. No business can reach that ideal, but the closer to it you get, the more profitable you’ll be and the easier it is to grow your business.
Automating frees up time for you and your employees to focus on tasks that drive more value for your customers. It also speeds up your business processes and makes routine tasks much more simple than they would be without automation. You can also use business automation to reduce costs and improve cash flow.
With so many benefits to automation, most businesses have either already started implementing automation or plan to in the near future. In today’s post, we’ll look at 5 ways that you can start automating your business right now.
1) Have a plan in place
Implementing modern business process automation like NextProcess offers is fairly simple. Even so, you can only automate your business processes effectively if you know what your goals are. Without a plan for automation, there’s a good chance you won’t end up with the type of automated system that is best for your company.
If you don’t have an automation plan in place with concrete goals and actions to get there, develop one now. The time you spend making a plan for automation will make the entire process go more smoothly. It’ll also make it easier to communicate your needs to your software supplier.
2) Audit your internal processes
If it’s been more than a couple of years since you’ve audited your major internal processes, it’s time to take stock of what works and what doesn’t. Assessing your organization’s performance against relevant standards, policies, metrics, or regulations can give you a good look at what processes can benefit from automation.
As part of this audit, don’t forget to talk with your employees and get their perspective on how business processes in your company work and what needs to change. They’re an invaluable asset when assessing your company’s internal processes.
3) Use G Suite
Google’s set of cloud computing, productivity, and collaboration tools provide a good first step in automating your business. G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Your Domain) includes a calendar, exceptional e-mail application, secure team messaging, contacts lists, and cloud storage for documents. These tools are no longer free (it starts at $6 per user per month), but you get tremendous value for what you pay. And it’s easy to add more users as your business grows.
4) Outsource or automate your business processes
Nobody can do it better than you, right? That may be true, but your business will never grow beyond yourself if you try to micromanage everything personally.
So what are your options? You can either hire employees to handle your business processes in-house or outsource the processes you don’t want to do to another company. For the first option, keep in mind that automating your processes will make it easier for a small number of employees to handle processing and you’ll also have more direct control. For the second option, keep in mind that outsourcing takes more of the routine workload off your hands so you can focus on tasks that relate most directly to your business.
If you’re outsourcing any processes that deal with customers, make sure you agree with the outsourcing company on whether they will represent themselves as part of your company or as their own entity.
5) Avoid using MS Excel for any of your financials
We’re not bashing the program here, but the truth is Microsoft Excel is only good for financial reporting up to a certain point. At some point, it becomes too much manual labor. When that happens, you can turn to tons of programs run over the cloud that perform the exact same functions much better and which are more easily accessible.
Consider an Accounts Payables Software as a Service solution to help streamline your processes. And then follow the same idea for any other processes you have, such as procurement, travel and expense reporting, and document management. Take a good look at all manual labor you perform and see if it can be replaced by an business automation and outsourcing programs. When you don’t take advantage of automation, you’re wasting valuable time you could use to grow your business.
Your Business Won’t Run on Autopilot…
… but business automating and outsourcing will make your business processes much more efficient once all is said and done! The more you prime your internal business processes, the more profitable you can be externally.
If you’re ready to put automation to work in your business, contact us today. We’ll schedule a free demo so you can see exactly how our automation software can help your growing business succeed.