5 IT Automation Best Practices for Business Success

Over time, IT has become increasingly more important in business. With the speedy development of technology, more and more employees need to be fluent with IT components. While IT has helped make things efficient, there are still many demands on your time.   

This brings us to automation. One thing businesses have a lot of are tasks. Be it talking to a client or handling B2B documents, businesses are always at risk of losing track of all there is to do.  

We’re here to tell you life can be easier for you. IT automation in businesses falls under BPA. BPA, or Business Process Automation, essentially has the goal of making your business run better. 

A good automation software or service should help you focus more on the quality of output. So much better than having to worry about deadlines all the time!

Below, we’ve compiled 5 of the best practices in IT automation. Hopefully, these will help you find more time in your day-to-day processes. 

5 IT Automation Best Practices

1. Don’t leave your leads hanging 

One thing that has stayed important in business is staying in communication with the customer. Without communication, essential information that your customer needs won’t be received.  

One way in which businesses have addressed this is by outsourcing the service. At least in that way, they can be sure that someone will pick up if a lead calls up with an inquiry, right? The thing is, that can quickly get really expensive.

This is where the digital world offers advantages to modern businesses. Automated lead communication doesn’t have to be complicated. And it’s not as expensive as hiring a whole office!

A perfect example would be the chatbots you run into when inquiring about an online store. At any time of the day, any potential customer with a question can have their queries answered. 

You can even set it up so that those with a question that a chatbot can’t answer can just set an appointment. At least this way no one will feel like they’re being ignored. 

1. Don’t take too long with important documents

Business documents are an integral part of any business. From permits to proposals, there’s a lot to deal with, track, and secure. Automating these processes will allow your team to focus on the important details of the day.

Take proposals for example. Business proposals, when taken seriously, can take a team quite some time to complete. That’s aside from the quality control the team leader has to manage. Preparing timely proposals can be a stressful and time-consuming task.  

Proposal automation won’t do every single thing for you, but it gets pretty close. What it will do is assist you and your team with all the extra bits. From performance monitoring of your team to quality-control; a good automation tool will give you more time to think. 

Some other benefits are:

• Project monitoring and tracking
• Centralized content source
• Available templates for easy compilation of data

Having this extra hand gives your team that much more room to breathe. It’s not a fix-all, but the impact will surely be appreciated by everyone on your team.

1. Give people a warm welcome

Ever notice the maître d’ when you go to a nice restaurant? Observe how they do their job. Basically, they’re there to make you feel welcome and special from the moment you arrive.

It won’t do for you to hire someone just to welcome every single person subscribing to your site. This is why automated email services are so useful. 

Instead of spending more of your valuable time on this, have it automated. It might take some time to set it up but we promise you, it’ll be worth it. 

Try crafting an automated “Welcome Pack” to new subscribers. This way they receive a little special treatment. 

The thing with conversions is they can take a bit of nurturing. And while you’re at it, through this automated service, you can give a little something to your leads as well.  

1. Follow up with leads with less hassle

Converting leads can take some time depending on your business model. This can be a lengthy process where much of your time is spent messaging each lead one-by-one. 

We’re here to tell you it doesn’t need to take that much time. Take these situations as examples:

Your online business noticed that someone has a shopping cart that hasn’t been checked out. Instead of assuming that this person was merely browsing, you decide to follow up with the customer. 

Fortunately, this person just forgot to check out. So in this case, you’ve won. Unfortunately, with online businesses, doing this one-by-one just isn’t feasible. This will take too much time and everyone knows, time is money. 

Or take it another way. Let’s say your business sells products that need refilling or are used consistently. 

Try setting a timer that would automatically contact that person after a set period. That way, the customer has a reminder that they’ll need to start checking their supply of your goods in order to reorder soon.

In either case, your business had the chance to make the most of your time and opportunities. The impact of automation in the industry can guarantee development from that angle, at the least. 

1. Stay active on Social Media

Everyone knows how important it is for a business to be present on social media. The sheer traffic available should be enough reason for businesses to try it out.

The problem begins when you start having to maintain these social media accounts. It takes a certain amount of discipline and creativity to keep creating shareable content. You could always hire a social media professional for this. 

As in many of these cases, this can be expensive. Luckily, there are a few automation tools available for social media. These will help you keep to a schedule with your releases. At least this way you can put more time into the quality of the content.

Having fresh content on your business profile can only be of benefit to your business. And this tells search engine algorithms that your site is active and likely to be relevant for search queries. 

Conclusion

Process automation has come a long way since we first established the possibilities. While not everything can be answered with automation, what we have available is enough to help us make better use of our time.

This serves us all particularly well in the business sector. Technology has helped bring many dated practices into a more efficient future. Limitations caused by lack of manpower and the like can be addressed with the computer.