You may have heard the news, bots are stealing jobs left, right and centre. By 2025, half of all work ON THE PLANET will be handled by robots (that’s 75 million). But those that foresee Armageddon are missing a trick, as the rise of the robots is also predicted to create 133 million NEW jobs by 2022.
Time saved, costs lowered, jobs created. What’s not to love?
So why are offices the world over still relying on paper? (more than half of all businesses still work in this way); especially when automation tools have never been friendlier or more expansive in capabilities? This reliance on paper becomes even more mind-boggling when we consider that automation could save as much as 3 hours a day for 78% of businesses (time that would be better spent on human-worthy tasks, like exceptional customer experiences).
Happy workers. Happy customers. Happy profit margins (delirious business owner).
Automation isn’t just for the cutting-edge, high-tech businesses out there either. Here are five routine tasks to leave to digital automation.
Meet the new recruiter – the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). It may be lacking the sharp business suit, but it does deliver impressive talent-acquisition benefits.
75% of multinationals are already using it to automate their hiring processes, and 94% of all users say that it has worked wonders for their recruitment results.
Look at your business tasks that rely on paper, spreadsheets and email. Which tasks are repeated over, and over, and over again? (Examples include invoices, estimates, and contracts). Which tasks are also left wide open to human error? These are the workflows you should be focusing on automating and moving across to digital.
Urgh – the Monday morning deluge of emails. On average, workers spend 13 hours on email every, single, week. While necessary for outside communication, it’s far from efficient when it comes to your teams.
Slack is a tool that can streamline workflows and communication between team members; it also features integration with your main email (you can even select who you want to hear from in Slack, while cutting out the SPAM and the non-urgent emails).
If you don’t know by now, customers love bots. So much so in fact, that 69% of consumers prefer chatbots over real people for quick answers.
A chatbot is the perfect replacement for a human when you receive a high number of enquires that ask the same types of questions. Facebook chatbots can also handle order and shipping confirmations; send out tracking numbers; provide order updates and gain customer feedback.
Footnote: Despite the promise of AI-created content, we’re not there yet. The software that ‘spins’ blogs and articles read like war and peace shredded then stuck back together. But while you shouldn’t automate the writing of your content, you should absolutely automate the promotion of it (such as automated email notifications, instant or scheduled social publication and RSS syndication).
In terms of automation tools, Salesforce is a must for marketing and sales automation; while its sister platform, Pardot can automate everything from email marketing to lead scoring for B2B companies.