6 Ways Workflow Automation Software Saves Small Businesses Time
Making your essential operations more efficient
Although your business needs many things to stay profitable, time is one of your most valuable resources. Workflow automation software can help you and your team make the most of every minute.
Key Takeaways:
- Automation can make your business processes more efficient and significantly improve your bottom line.
- Automation frees your employees from having to do the most repetitive, least interesting tasks for more productive and engaging work.
While you can’t create more hours in the day, you can develop processes and implement tools that allow you to manage your time better. Software that addresses your workflow bottlenecks improves efficiency and profitability. Custom applications like no-code workflow automation software are just one type of solution the team at Watkyn provides.
Who Needs Workflow Automation Software?
Most business work flows include a set of tasks that have to be performed over and over again without much variation. While these daily operations may be essential to your business, spending more time on them than necessary undercuts your business’s growth and profits. It’s much more effective to rely on automation to remove the inefficiencies and streamline your processes.
Workflow automation is a tool that can transform any industry, as customization allows you to address the specific areas of your business that need improvement. A few examples include:
- Marketing – let your workflow automation software manage your client contacts and your email campaigns
- Publishing – make contracting with authors and sellers easy and quick
- IT services – create a ticketing system to keep track of help requests and their resolution
- Insurance – setup automated disclosures, notifications, and invoicing
- Logistics – get real-time updates on changes to your inventory
- Education – collect health information, create recruitment campaigns, improve course evaluations, and much more
Businesses of all sizes can benefit from workflow automation. Customized applications can assist with accounting functions, human resources tasks, customer communication, and project management.
The Time-Saving Benefits of Workflow Automation Tools
Developing workflow automation is the process of taking documents, tasks, or information across work-related activities and streamlining these interactions to achieve a specific goal.
There are many benefits associated with workflow automation, but time savings are the primary motivation for implementing a digital solution–and the more time you save, the more money you save. These are some of the key ways workflow management software helps your company save time.
- Fewer Errors To Address
Even the most talented team of employees has the potential to make mistakes, which can cost your business money and hurt the customer relationship. You lose precious time as team members must backtrack to correct mistakes or put in extra hours to make adjustments and address the issues.
When technology provides automated workflows, it consistently reduces mistakes. So long as any data entered in the system is correct, the output is accurate and reliable, saving employees the time it takes to repeat tasks after correcting issues.
2. Increased Speed of Task Completion
Well-designed automations run on the schedule you desire without interruption for holidays, vacations, or illness–and a custom workflow automation solution is the ultimate multitasker. This makes sticking to a timeline or maintaining a completion rate much easier and improves the rate at which you can complete one task or project and move on to the next.
3. Prioritized Task Management
Of the dozen manual tasks your team undertakes daily, some have more value than others and some are more urgent than others. Manually assigning tasks is time-consuming and leaves you focused on the process, not on the results. The need to assign tasks manually can also result in unnecessary delays, idle time, and backlogs down the road. A collaborative workflow automation tool from customized workflow automation software simplifies task management and saves time by automating repetitive tasks and providing up-to-the-minute information about where your projects stand.
4. Real-Time Communication
A real-time exchange of information is an important part of decision-making and productivity, as team members waiting on approval or input can’t move forward if someone is away from their desk, out of the office, or misses an email buried in an overstuffed inbox. Automating sequences for approval, notifications, leads, or other communication eliminates delays in the workflow.
5. Accurate Data Reporting
Business reporting provides your company with the information necessary to set business goals, evaluate the strengths or weaknesses of your operations, and assess your financial position. While you could spend your day copying and pasting data from multiple systems or meeting with leadership from each department, this isn’t an efficient way to run your business.
With workflow automation software, you have access to reporting tools that reveal the health and performance of your business with the push of a button. Customized reporting provides trend tracking, monitors spending, and evaluates the company’s use of resources so that your information is both comprehensive and up-to-date.
Benefits of business intelligence using workflow automation software
6. Recruitment and Retention of Skilled Talent
Your company is only as strong as the people it employs, making skilled hires a priority. While some worry that automating processes takes away jobs, it in fact gives workers the freedom to excel in roles or tasks that match their strengths. Dull, repetitive tasks can waste time with busy work and be demeaning to employees, leaving them feeling unappreciated or unchallenged.
Low morale or a lack of motivation to engage can lead to higher turnover rates–and recruiting and onboarding cost a company more than it takes to retain an employee. Rapid turnover also causes departments to spend extra time on employee training. Automation software helps employees succeed by giving them the time to be productive.
The Ability To Create Unique Workflow Automation Software Solutions
While you could find a pre-packaged retail solution for your workflow automation needs, you can likely achieve higher productivity and more efficiency with a custom application from Watkyn. Our team listens to your needs, learns about your operations, and develops workflow automation software to streamline business processes and advance your particular business goals. Contact our team to learn more.
