Automation Tips for Small Businesses

You’ll have heard over the course of the last ten years, that automation is the future. You’ll even have seen – in self-checkout facilities, Amazon warehouse bots, and autonomous cars – this philosophy in action around you.

When it comes to your small business, you shouldn’t resist this growing trend that serves to boost productivity and enable companies to lay off staff in favor of a more efficient worker – in the form of a machine. This article examines where small businesses should consider automating: which areas are most profitable to liberate from human management to put into the hands of machines.

Production Line

The obvious answer to this question is the production line – something that’s been automated from the Victorian age up to this one. With machines becoming even more complex, and able to perform complex movements programmed through electronic data, you’re able now to dispense with all your human production line staff in favor of their robotic alternatives, freeing up personnel and funds for those elements in your business that really matter.

Software

Automation in the digital age isn’t just about high-tech machines and robotic processing arms. It’s also about the marketing software that you use in your back office, and the ways in which you can automate your digital processes in order to save your business cash, time and energy in the long-run. You might choose to automate one of the following tasks:

• Payroll calculation and distribution
• Tax payments and accounting
• Order monitoring and data inputting
• Communications management and customer services
• Marketing analysis and strategy planning

The list goes on and on, encompassing, effectively, all areas of your business. If you’re savvy with computers, and able to hire an IT specialist to help you install all of these systems into your small business, you’ll find that your workload for human labor is vastly reduced, leaving you with a streamlined team of individuals who are working on what’s truly important in your company.

Recycling

There can be no excuse for a small business operating in 2019 to fail in its duty to recycle waste. In this day and age, environmental concerns are at the top of the agenda for many consumers, especially those concerned with the rising levels of landfill waste accumulating across the nation. As such, it’s your responsibility to find a way to effectively manage your waste production, including methods to help you:

• Identify trash that you can recycle, and sort it into areas of your warehouse or factory
• Use a staff member to manage waste, with targets to drive it down and to drive up recycling
• Invest in a baler and baler wire to bind your waste bales from www.balingwiredirect.com
• Communicate with local recycling companies in order to set up a waste management partnership

If your business is serious about its impact on the world, you should manage your waste through automated means.

Communications

Nothing can feel as strenuous and stressful as managing a number of lines – phones, emails, text and app chats all to talk to customers. You want to provide excellent customer service, but you also don’t want half of your team talking incessantly with customers. As such, automating elements of your customer service facilities is a great idea – setting up bots, automated call settings, and an automated inbox for consumer queries.

These tips will help your small business make the most of automation going forwards into 2020.