A consistent theme of our blog is talking about ways that business owners can focus more on the things that actually make an impact on growing their business. For small businesses there are a lot of tasks that take up a lot of time and provide very little commercial return. They are however, necessary, but can very easily take away focus from the more important tasks.

So how should you approach these issues as a business owner?

There are now many more ways that systems and processes in businesses can be automated. The more automation you can do, the less thinking is required about a task and it’s much more likely that it will get done in a way that doesn’t drag you away from the real impact making tasks in your business. Today we are looking at just a handful of the types of tasks you could automate and benefit from – let’s dive in!

The first area to look at is how you can automate repetitive tasks. What that task is will differ from business to business, but anything that needs to be done frequently and follows the same procedure would be a prime candidate to identify for automation. There are many tools available on the market that help to automate small repetitive tasks (Zappier or IFTTT for example).

If you’re struggling to identify those initial tasks to automate then it would be worth spending some time writing a standard operating procedure for some of the tasks that happen in your business. This is just a step by step process of actions to follow to ensure a task happens. You may find once you start writing things down that there are more tasks that you can automate or delegate than you initially thought.

We’ll say at the outset that by no means should you automate every single touch point you have with your customers – particularly for service businesses the need for people to know you, like you and trust you is a vital part of the sales process.

However, that is not to say that there aren’t important parts of managing customer relationships that can’t be automated. Email newsletters remain an important way to keep in touch with customers either about important updates they should know about or regarding sales and events that you would like them to participate in. For some businesses you could even automate a series of emails to customers and prospects as a sales funnel, or automate the process for customers to book appointments.

You will be aware that IT can take up a big chunk of a businesses’ time – especially if that business isn’t an IT specialist. Software updates and data back ups are really important tasks to do, to keep things running smoothly and effectively, but they can take up a lot of time and energy.

It is well worth looking for ways to automate these tasks where you can. This could be as simple as scheduling software updates and backups to take place outside of work hours – or you might even want to consider if these are IT tasks that can be outsourced wholesale to IT professionals.

Some of these automation processes can be handled outside of your business, giving you time to focus on facing the challenges that really improve your bottom line. WebbyTech are able to support you with a range of IT issues that you may have in your business, giving you the time and space to grow.

You can find a full range of the services that we offer here, or contact us here for a no obligations conversation. We look forward to speaking with you.