Scale up your business with automation!
Society is currently undergoing a transition toward greater digitalization. Processes are being automated, and new technological solutions are becoming increasingly important for most businesses—enabling them to scale up their operations without increasing overhead costs. Are you wondering how to get started with automation? Here, we’ll walk you through what you need to consider.
Changing behavior and higher expectations – Today, we must be available 24/7
To understand why you need to automate your business, you first need to understand your customers and their changing needs and behaviors. Today, for example, most customers expect to receive the help or access to the information they’re looking for, no matter the time of day—and they expect it quickly. This means that you and other companies need to be available 24/7.
In addition to availability, customers expect it to be easy to get help. This means that today’s companies must not only be available 24/7—they must also be fast and efficient in both delivery and customer communication.
Meeting these needs through manual methods is generally very costly. Digitizing and automating processes enables you to meet your customers’ needs for greater accessibility, speed, and simplicity—without increasing your overhead.
Why does my business need to invest in automation?
Today, you need to take into account your customers’ specific needs, as well as their expectations for high-quality communication through their preferred channel. Without a smarter approach, the growth in your customer base, touchpoints, or business opportunities will require additional resources, which will naturally impact your costs.
By rethinking your existing work processes, leveraging new smart technology, and utilizing the data you already have, you can meet your customers’ evolving needs in a whole new way. This makes life easier for your employees while helping you establish a long-term, sustainable cost structure.
By automating all or part of your manual processes, you can perform multiple tasks simultaneously, faster, and at any time. You can easily scale up your business without having to hire more staff.
How do I get started on my automation journey?
First, you need to identify where automation is appropriate—and which processes you’re likely to succeed with. Start by reviewing your customer lifecycle and identifying the areas that are hindering your ability to expand your business without adding additional resources. Typically, these are areas that require a lot of manual tasks, which are time-consuming, both in terms of hours spent and lead time to deliver service to your customers.
Some people recognize these areas based on experience or intuition. Others need to investigate to understand where the challenges lie, for example by conducting workshops and interviews with employees, partners, and customers.
Regardless of how you identify suitable areas of focus, you need data to understand the current situation—and the value of automation.
Here are some examples of questions to consider in order to identify bottlenecks and opportunities for significant time and resource savings:
- How long does it take to register a new customer in our system?
- How long does it take for us to respond to incoming inquiries?
- How much time do we spend correcting errors caused by manual work?
“These types of questions, which focus on time and productivity, are an excellent starting point for companies looking to get started with automation. They are easy to quantify and serve as a rallying point for building a shared understanding of why change is needed.”
To better understand how you can grow your business through automation, consider the following:
- How many sales opportunities are we missing because we contact our customers too late?
- How many hours could be shifted from administrative tasks to customer-facing work in our sales team?
- By how much can we increase our profits by using segment-specific price lists?
“These figures are typically more difficult to quantify, but the issues are nonetheless central to the discussion of the value of automation in the customer lifecycle.”
The answers you get by asking yourself these questions are often the reasons why you should automate your business. Once you’ve successfully identified and prioritized a focus area, you’ll need to work out the details.
You can do this by thinking about:
- Which customer segments are affected
- The customer process, including the tasks performed at each step
- What happens before the trial and what happens after
- What roles and systems are currently used to manage the process
- What volumes and frequencies are available
Now describe the scope of your automation project. And to successfully design new ways of working, you need to consider:
- What proactive steps can we take to make things easier for our customers and for ourselves?
- If all parties involved in the process, including the customer, had access to the relevant information at the right time, which steps could be eliminated?
- Which steps actually create value?
“When you automate an existing process, it’s relatively easy to digitize and automate the current workflow. Remember—many steps in manual work processes are the result of working with physical paper without digital storage or tracking. Set high goals for your initiative and consider how you can make life easier for your customers and for yourself.”
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