May 13, 20204 min read

Business Automation

How Business Automation Will Change your Life

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade or so, you will have noticed how quickly automation has been creeping into the everyday of Australian business.

And with its inherent ability to improve processes and time management across all industries, it’s showing no signs of stopping.

Between business automation software and more advanced artificial intelligence taking over, the way we conduct our business is changing to make workloads, co ordination and analysis all a little bit simpler.

Let’s discuss a few specific automation tools and software your small business needs ASAP. The work methods may be evolving with the times, but the age-old saying of ‘time is money’ still applies perhaps now more than ever!

Marketing Tools

If you run a small business, the idea of marketing can be overwhelming, especially if you think about all the different platforms out there and how often the experts seem to recommend that you post.

In an increasingly online world, especially in light of the recent forced isolation of industries and communities, you can’t avoid digital marketing.

But with automation, you can make things much more streamlined and much less scary. You can access tools and apps that will:

· Automate your email responses to the most common emails inquiries you receive

· Automate email sequences for sales, and newsletters to keep your clients up to date

· Set up automatic messaging on your website and Facebook pages so people can connect with you immediately

· Preschedule all of your social media posts and automate them to go out at the times when your audience is most active

· Track the response and engagement on all of this so you know what is working and what isn’t.

Bank Feeds

Bank feeds are one of the handiest virtual inventions that BAS Agents have access to in today’s business environment.

A bank feed is a digital connection between your bank accounts and your business automation software which stores and organises all of your account’s transactions – think of it as a way to analyse your business’ performance through finance tracking.

Possibly the best benefit to using bank feeds is that it helps eliminate financial input errors, potentially saving you a motza from entering large amounts of data manually every time a transaction takes place.

In addition, bank feeds are able to stamp out duplication of transactions from human errors and simplifies keeping an eye on your cashflow.

Some small business owners will say using a bank feed is risky and unsecure, however this is just simply not the case. In fact, no one will be able to view the banking side of things, but employees can reap the benefit of full software and accounting accessibility.

These are usually set up internally by your financial institution’s internet banking service.

If you haven’t already looked into using bank feeds in conjunction with automation software, check it out today and see how quick and easy it is to setup. You can literally be synced up and good to go in minutes!

Data Entry

Two of the most amazingly effective data entry-based software are Receipt Bank and Hubdoc. These are basically an all-in-one type business automation software with the primary purpose of placing all of your financial and transactional documents in one safe, but accessible place.

These even come with neat little smartphone apps that allow you to snap a photo of your receipts and bills and import them straight into the software.

Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is a relatively new piece of technology that will scan your documents for data it can use for importing. No more filing cabinets or stacks of manila folders full of accounts!

Business automation software like this is pushing data entry aside and will soon no doubt be a thing of the past. Also, it’s as easy as sending an email invitation to your BAS Agent and they’ll have customisable access to all your records.

Logging on to just one platform instead of several sites to keep track of payments saves you hours of frustration following up on unnecessary billing issues.

Task Management

For teams working from home or across various locations or time zones, these are essential.

Task management tools will keep your projects and campaigns on track with a simple but effective task-managing platform. Business owners are able to enter specific details for group projects like priority, due dates, timelines, milestones and more!

Programs such as Asana and Trello are like intelligent to-do lists that assign, organise and track progress of tasks and people.

These tools use a combination of boards, lists, goals and groups to organise tasks and evaluate workflow.

You can visualise and oversee an entire project on one screen with the ability to structure and plan projects how you want.

These sorts of tools are designed to boost productivity within your team and reduce the amount of confusion relating to who’s responsible for what job.

Just like accounting-based automation software, these task management programs are accessible on all devices with their very own apps available as well. You can also attach or submit files and documents all in the one place, saving you a great deal of time and hassle.