How to Automate Your Business Processes: The Software You Should Be Using
The first things that come to mind when you hear the word “automation” are probably a robot, technology, and efficiency. None of these are wrong of course, but there is much more to automation than a robot software doing tasks for you. Automation refers to the process of converting a work procedure to an automatic task rather than human control. Automation involves a bit more than simply transferring human function and responsibility to a machine, but includes a deeper restructuring of the workflow, redefining the roles of both the human and computer.
Competitive and growing companies alike can benefit greatly from automation software in the form of improved organization, communication, streamlines processes, and visibility among departments. Automation tools allow businesses to keep up by allowing tasks to be completed in a faster, more efficient manner, giving you the free time, you may need to focus on other aspects of growing your company and staying competitive. With the advancement of automation and technology, comes a large variety of options when it comes to selecting automation tools and software. It can get tricky to sort out the ones that are the best fit for your business needs, so we put together a list of some automation software tools to get you started.
HubSpot
Oftentimes, the part of the business budget for things such as email and social media can fall by the wayside because you may not see how these aspects directly affect your bottom line. HubSpot is a tool that allows you to see your social media posts, blogs, emails and more all under one roof. The lead generation process can be long difficult to track. With HubSpot, you can automate your entire process by consistently marketing towards your current leads.
Automating your emails through HubSpot, allows you to generate more leads and focus on the main goal while seeing the visual result of automated emails through analytics. Customization and personalization are easier than ever when creating content, giving you more time in your day while feeling satisfied with the end result.
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MailChimp
MailChimp is a marketing and email automation platform that allows you to create free targeted emails that send at a customized date or event, or even based on activity. The purpose of the MailChimp automation builder feature is to design and schedule email campaigns to engage with your contacts automatically.
With the automation builder, you can create your set of emails ahead of time to your contacts and customize the sending criteria. MailChimp will then use your email and criteria settings to send the emails based on activity and other triggers to your contacts while the rest of your emails for the next step, wait in a queue.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a top cloud-based customer relationship manager (CRM) platform. Salesforce simplifies your business’s sales, service, and marketing. Manage support, messages, and sales through Salesforce anywhere you’re located, thanks to the cloud-based passage the software runs on.
Connect with contacts as well as like-minded peers to grow your company and boost productivity, all while Salesforce monitors progress with customers, leads, and support tickets in the system, giving you performance analytics.
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Slack
Slack is a team collaboration and communication tool used to create a shared workspace for organized conversations. Communication is vital to a healthy company and its employees. Having a simplified, cloud-based center like Slack, you can automate your internal communication processes by developing a shared understanding among teams.
Creating a productive, understanding and team-oriented environment with the easy process of communication automation, will help employees stay informed and increase transparency. Slack is also easy to integrate with other software you may currently use, giving you even more time and ways to stay connected.
Asana
Asana is a project and task management solution that allows you to stay organized and meet your goals. Asana automates your team’s projects and tasks by keeping them updated and helping you move forward toward completing them according to your custom settings.
With calendars, timelines, project boards, analytical dashboards, and over 100 possible integration abilities, Asana is a great tool you can use to keep track of the important things and share progress with the rest of your team. The automation in Asana is effective in keeping your schedule visible to you so you can see gaps or overlaps in your days as well as seeing deadlines as they approach, keeping your goals front and center.
BambooHR
BambooHR is a Human Resources Information System that eliminates the use of paperwork and spreadsheets. Oddly enough, Bamboo puts the human back in HR by automating many of tasks associated with HR processes and allows the human to focus on the other employees.
Create custom tabs and receive instant reports using tracking and groups automation. By tracking time off and benefits automatically, you can throw away the vacation days spreadsheets and allow BambooHR to take care of it. BambooHR is also able to integrate with other services including payroll for an even smoother workflow in the HR department.
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Pipedrive
Pipedrive is a sales management tool designed with small sales teams in mind to help manage their sales process. With the automated, visual pipeline, you can get a better understanding of how your sales deals and goals meet with activity and to-do list reminders.
No more hunting and searching for the right information you need for a sales meeting. Pipedrive’s automated sales data management, lets you keep all that information in one place for easy access. Integration is also a breeze from Pipedrive. Tracking your emails from Outlook, Gmail, and others is simple from the Sales Inbox. Save time during your day by sending emails directly from Pipedrive through your email platforms.
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Zapier
Zapier is web-based service which allows users to integrate nearly every web application they use. By linking other applications, you use on a daily basis to Zapier, you can fully automate the information between all of your apps with workflows. This automation process allows you to streamline processes for faster results.
With more than 1,000 web apps supported with Zapier automation, you can connect multiple apps through workflows you create. Sometimes tasks can be time-consuming when needing to move between apps to reach a goal. With Zapier automation, you can cut through the middle and save time during the day.
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