10 Business Tasks That Should Be Automated

Even the most efficient and productive teams can have all of their progress come to a grinding halt, hindered by menial tasks that get in the way. Every team and individual is affected by tedious assignments that need to be completed for work to progress, and these tasks can negatively impact productivity and creativity. There is an extensive range of tasks like this, all of which have the ability to be automated. Tapping into digital automation of small tasks can boost productivity and let your team get back to the work they were hired to do.

Which Tasks Should Be Automated?

With today's automation technology, a wide range of operational tasks have the ability to be automated. Let's explore some of the most important and useful tasks to automate.

Post publishing

Whether posting blogs to a website or posts to social media, needing to manually click "post" at all hours is inconvenient, particularly when posting for clients in different time zones. Automating post publishing allows you to schedule posts for the most optimized days and times. The bandwidth your team will get back can be better utilized to create highly effective content and nurture community engagement by responding to comments promptly.

Customer support

Chatting with customers over the phone or via email can be tedious and time-consuming. Chatbots and automated email communication can provide customers with all the answers they need without ever needing to speak with an actual representative from your organization. Automated customer support also provides the opportunity to expand available support hours; your company can even offer 24/7 support. Additionally, a chatbot or other form of customer support eliminates any confusion over which team members handle different customer inquiries.

Web traffic tracking

Manually collecting and compiling web traffic data can take copious amounts of time and can often be incomplete. By using popular web analytics tools, web traffic insights can be delivered to your inbox as often as you need them.

Invoice reminders

It is not the responsibility of the client to stay on top of paying your organization for your work, but manually sending invoices means that work and payments can easily be missed. Task automation can remind managers when it's time to invoice a client, ensure that all the work completed in a given timeframe is included, and reduce the rate of invoicing errors that occur. As an added bonus, reviewing the data collected from an invoice automation platform may provide new insights into purchasing and payment habits, saving you time and money.

Payroll

Your Human Resources department can be held up for long periods of time with tedious payroll. Why not automate your payroll? Task automation can perform payroll steps easily and accurately, allowing HR the flexibility to complete other tasks.

File backups

File backups are an essential part of any organization's processes, but they can take hours or even days depending on the size of your files and how long it's been since the last backup. Backing up your files can be easily automated with scheduled file backups through digital asset management systems.

Safe file sharing

Along with backing up files, digital asset management technology can also automate file sharing processes, ensuring the right team members and clients have access to the right materials. Automated file transfer provides much more powerful, and secure data control over file access and helps perpetuate company use policies and naming conventions for consistency.

Email nurturing

Sending individual nurture emails can take significant amounts of time and attention to detail. Email nurture campaigns can run on an automated schedule, helping your organization stay engaged with potential leads without pushing a button.

To-do list reminders

Still manually checking off a to-do list? Project management technology can provide the digital automation of task reminders, helping members of any team stay on top of their to-do lists.

Project progress notification

The process of notifying the team member in charge of the next step in a project can take precious minutes that may seem insignificant in the moment but can add up over time. Project progress notifications can be automated through the right project management system, alerting your team members when it's their turn to contribute to a project.

How to Automate Tasks with IO Integration

While the concept of task automation is exciting and important for many managers, knowing where to start can be intimidating. The team at IO Integration can analyze your operations and establish the best methods and technologies for task automation throughout your organization. Speak with an expert from IO Integration today to learn more about how your organization can streamline workflows through automation.