Three Critical Business Functions that Need Automated Processes

Time is any person’s most valuable asset, and that is just as true for a business. Automating your business processes helps you save money by freeing up time for you and your staff.

With your company not spending time manually executing these processes they can use their time to take care of leads and clients which reduces the chance of oversights and errors that could affect your productivity and profitability.

This is especially important in three key areas of your business operations:

• Project management
• Customer relationship management (CRM)
• Customer support

Making sure that your company has the right software to manage these tasks efficiently allows you to make the most effective use of your available resources. You will also be able to manage scheduling, invoicing, and other necessary tasks more easily.

Here are some key ways in which automated processes provides essential support for your business operations.

Automating Project Management

Managing the stages and tasks of your projects can be challenging. Project management software platforms often provides added help in automating common processes and tasks.

Some of the most important automated functions for your project management software to contain include the following:

• Setting up scheduling rules that will apply to multiple projects can save you tremendous amounts of time during initial setup. Taking a consistent approach to these activities can also help your team members by providing them with established workflows for a smaller learning curve.
• Timelines can be established with automatic processing that uses previously established rulesets to schedule tasks. This can allow on-the-fly adjustments of scheduling for stages and tasks with automatic notifications sent to those team members affected by these adjustments. Any lag time needed can be calculated as part of the automated process, reducing the chance of human error when managing these tasks.
• Status changes in stage or task completion can be automatically applied to all dependent processes. This can provide added support for team members who depend on scheduling information to plan their workflows and tasks.
• Some project management software packages incorporate automatic tracking and reporting of tasks to provide solid accountability for your team members and improved management capabilities for your leadership team.
• Automated sign-off rules can prompt the generation of invoices at the conclusion of each stage or at the end of the project as soon as the client has signed off on these phases. Stage-based invoicing can sometimes provide greater control over cash flow and can help your company to manage its billing more efficiently.

Robust automation features are critical to the ongoing success of your project management efforts. By setting up rulesets that can be used consistently to manage scheduling, timelines and status changes, you can boost productivity and streamline the training process for your employees.

This translates into increased profitability and added flexibility when managing ongoing tasks.

Automating Customer Relationship Management

Developing leads and following up on these contacts is critical to the ongoing growth of your company. Automating some of the tasks associated with CRM frees up time and reduces wasted efforts on the part of your sales staff.

• Automated processes can convert emails to leads —and automatically notify sales team members— when communications are received by specific email addresses designated by your company. This eliminates the guesswork associated with manually checking mail addresses against existing contacts.
• Web-to-lead and Web-to-opportunity automation can perform basically the same function by harvesting information from web forms and online contact points. By automating these processes, you reduce duplications while ensuring that your leads lists are as complete and comprehensive as possible.
• Contacts from the same organization can be identified by email addresses and filed together to facilitate improved communication and marketing.
• Tasks can be created that can be assigned automatically upon the receipt of a lead. Notifications can also be delivered to the staff members assigned to the lead, allowing them to accept the task immediately, accept it later, or reject it. This creates greater accountability among staff members and increased productivity for everyone in your organization.
• Emails can be generated and sent out automatically to customers when certain pre-established conditions have been met. For example, thank-you emails could be generated and dispatched to customers after their first purchase.
• Emails can be generated and sent out automatically to customers when certain pre-established conditions have been met. For example, thank-you emails could be generated and dispatched to customers after their first purchase.
• When leads are converted to customers or are disqualified, automated systems can process this change in status without the need for human intervention. This significantly reduces CRM workloads throughout your organization.
• Invoices can be generated automatically according to rules you set up and then sent out at completion of stages or of the entire project.

Implementing automated functionality in your CRM system streamlines processing and helps your sales staff spend less time maintaining your database and more time making connections with your current and prospective clients.

Automating Customer Support

Making sure that your customers receive personalized attention and the right solutions for their issues can have a positive impact on customer loyalty and retention. Automating certain aspects of your customer support process speeds response times and ensures greater accountability among your customer service staff members.

Here are some of the most important ways in which automation enhances the customer support experience for your clients.

Automated tracking of paid support helps you and your customers monitor the number of hours expended and remaining for these service plans. If desired, you can even send out email notifications to your clients letting them know when they reach a certain number of hours remaining. This can sometimes serve as a secondary form of marketing for your support services and boost your reputation for outstanding customer service.

• Tasks can be automatically assigned to staff members according to rules established by your company. Since this chore would otherwise fall to supervisors within your organization, automation of this process can potentially free up valuable staff time for other activities. Additionally, automatic processing is usually faster and ensures that customer requests are addressed more quickly.
• Oversight is simple with automated tracking and monitoring of task progress through the system interface. This helps supervisors track productivity and identify top performers within their customer service team. If needed, some systems can even send notifications to supervisors when a customer ticket has been in the queue for too long.
• Automated tracking of paid support helps you and your customers monitor the number of hours expended and remaining for these service plans. If desired, you can even send out email notifications to your clients letting them know when they reach a certain number of hours remaining. This can sometimes serve as a secondary form of marketing for your support services and boost your reputation for outstanding customer service.

Automating some of your customer support tasks allows your business to make the most effective use of your available resources while ensuring the fastest and most practical solutions for your clients.

Integrated Automation Creates Greater Efficiency

The benefits of automating business processes are numerous. The more processes you can automate, the better equipped you are to manage all aspects of your business operations

The increase in efficiency and reduction of human error will more than compensate for costs involved in getting the perfect business automation software for your business.

BlueCamroo offers an integrated approach to project management, customer relationship management, and customer support activities. By automating the many processes associated with these areas, you can increase your profitability while reducing costs.

Contact BlueCamroo today to request more information.