Marketing / Automation

5 ways to automate repetitive tasks in the office

Laura Dolan

Updated: Dec 07, 2023 · 4 min read

Toolkit for download in this article

office automation

Let’s face it. Many office tasks seem tedious and redundant after a while. It’s manual labor that takes time away from what really breathes life into your business such as generating more leads and thinking of new ideas that keep the company fresh.

You need to stop wasting your time with administrative, invoicing, and HR tasks. In this wonderful digital age, office automation is the way to go so these time-consuming duties can be done for you, letting you focus on the imperative aspects of your business.

Check out these office tasks that can be automated:

Gathering and organizing customers’ info

Automation puts your customers and prospects to work, enabling them to input their information themselves via website forms. That information is then automatically uploaded to a database that can be accessed by multiple departments.

You can also structure your automation process to help you compartmentalize your customers by allowing them to submit their various preferences. That way, your customers will receive correspondence that is only applicable to them, improving marketing efforts and results.

Without automation, you would have to write everything by hand, organize, segment and update the data before it’s manually entered into the system.

Calendar reminders

Office automation software significantly decreases the time it takes to coordinate schedules, appointment bookings, and reminders. You can eliminate calendar comparisons and the song and dance that comes with playing phone tag or sending emails to compromise on availability.

In relation to that, let automation software take over sending a thank you note or a follow-up message after a sales call. It’s a “set it and forget it” type of deal. Once you prompt the system to send any reminders or messages it needs to correspond at a designated time, the rest is off your shoulders.

Auto signatures

Think about what it used to take to get a contract or agreement document signed. You would draft it, send it off in the mail, hope that it gets signed, and then wait for it to be mailed back. Those days are over.

With programs such as Docusign, you can automate your paperwork so it’s all done digitally, even the signature itself. You can also auto generate a calendar reminder to the signee so that it reduces the time it takes for the document to be returned. People are also more inclined to sign and return digital forms via email than having to put them in snail mail.

Finances

This part of automation gets tricky because you want to ensure your system is highly secured, especially when it comes to dealing with money.

Setting up quotes and doing invoicing in the past consumed a lot of time and paperwork. Not to mention the wait time to receive payment.

Office automation generates quotes and invoices complete with digital reminders, recurring invoices, and automatic payment dates that yield more efficient workflow and greater cash flow.

Not only are you automating accounts receivable, of course you also need to automate your accounts payable. Forget about handwritten checks and credit card payments. Automatic bill pay saves you time and lets you establish a withdrawal schedule that ensures you always pay on time.

Hiring new employees

New hire screening and onboarding is one of the more time-consuming tasks overall with the overwhelming amount of forms (many of them asking for the same information) that must be manually filled out and processed.

Bringing on new employees is also time-sensitive and if the company is expanding, it can delay start dates and affect the company’s productivity while anticipating the help of the new members.

Automation can decrease the time it takes to pre-screen potential candidates by reading each application or resume and eliminating any applicants who don’t qualify.

Once the new hires start, the automation software digitally populates their basic information throughout all the necessary forms. This allows HR to set their priorities on policies regarding motivation and retention as well as focusing on some of the more critical matters that affect employees.

How did we live without office automation?

We’re so fortunate to live in a time when office automation is available to us. It’s easy to take this technology for granted, but think about how much easier it makes our lives. It doesn’t matter if your small business has one or many employees, the automation process is a game changer. Much like the way Keap can automate numerous business tasks to save you time, automation creates efficiency, saves money, helps employees hone their skills with more challenging tasks, reduces stress, and increases production.

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