Because many companies have made use of online spaces for everything from new employee training and HR needs to sales management and inventory tracking, automation is a valuable tool that can help businesses of every size keep track of all their digital data. Even if you haven’t used digital tools much in your operation, you can still automate many parts of your everyday tasks to streamline the workflow and cut down on menial data entry.
The first thing you should decide as you explore automation options for your workflow is which processes you would like to automate in the first place. You can automate all or some of your work processes to see what works best for your company. Check out some of the top workflow automation software and their types to help you automate your workflow today!
The Best Workflow Automation Software Tools
1. HR Automation
One reason you may want to automate human resources services is that it can reduce your payroll processing costs by up to 80%, as you reduce manual form-filling, data collection, and profile updates. Choose a workflow automation software that can help you auto-fill many of your forms, including:
- Benefits Administration
- Education
- Training
- Time Management
- Pay Induction
- Compliance Reports
Recruiting Automation
In addition to internal HR needs, you should also consider automation for recruiting new staff. In addition to saving time and money, you can also enhance decision-making processes, improve communication, and increase productivity. Some software services that can make recruiting much easier include tracking candidate progress and offer letters, applicant data management, screening and assessments, and job templates.
2. Database Management
One of the biggest issues with employee automated database management is human error. While you may not be using a paper filing system anymore, there’s still as much opportunity for data input error, confusion when implementing changes, and issues with deployment. Automating your database management reduces human error and increases reliability and speed. There are many software tools that can handle your automation with services, including:
- Approvals
- Data Entry
- Script Review
- Query Analysis
- Reports & Graphs
- Importing New Data
- Merging Old & New Databases
3. Marketing Automation
The marketing funnel is one of the most complex processes your business may have. With marketing automation, you can streamline everything from email automation and social media posting to lead generation and analytics. If you want to free up your team to work on other essential tasks, consider automation for the following projects.
Email Automation
As one of the oldest forms of digital communication, emailing as a contact platform has the largest audience. While spam and ads have created a somewhat jaded email community, you can still get through to your customers with engaging, interactive, and interesting email offers. Whether you’re setting up abandoned cart emails or welcome emails, you can create comprehensive automation for email marketing that addresses every type of email trigger.
Utilize email automation for segmentation that sends emails for each of your unique audiences, create behavioral trigger emails when people sign up for a newsletter or restock, and keep track of split testing when you send multiple emails to different audiences within the same campaign. Some types of software even offer you an email template for each requirement that cuts down on the amount of time it takes you to develop each type of campaign.
Integrated Social Media Scheduling
While there are a number of standalone social media scheduling tools that could be considered automation, they may not offer as much functionality as you want or need. If you’re looking for tools that can show you engagement and content analytics, you may have to choose a more comprehensive automation software for social media.
In addition to posting and scheduling, these software tools can also handle social listening, which scours the internet for mentions of your brand or products. Social media software also manages social interactions through messaging, which helps you follow up on customer needs, conduct damage control, and provide more direct customer service.
Lead Nurturing
If you want to track, segment, or communicate with leads to ensure more conversions, you need both the basic and advanced lead nurturing functionality found in many workflow automation software tools.
Consider generating a lead database that can keep track of prospect behavior, engagement in campaigns, and conversations with customer service. You may also want to create drip campaigns that build trust in your company, improve brand awareness, and offer perfectly timed content.
Another invaluable tool that many of these automation software services offer includes lead scoring. With lead scoring, your software is ranking the viability of a specific lead. Do they fit within your targeted customer demographic? Do their past web activity and purchasing habits make it seem likely they’ll buy from you too? Lead scoring can make a huge difference in how you choose to interact with prospective clients and can completely transform campaigns.
Analytics
One of the biggest benefits that software automation offers is the precise, in-depth analytics you can get from each one of your campaign strategies. How do you know whether your website, PPC ads, email campaigns, and other marketing strategies are performing? The answer: analytics that look at everything, including:
- Website Data
- Ecommerce Platforms
- Call Metrics
- PPC Ads & Remarketing Campaigns
- Organic Search
- Social Media
With analytics data from all your digital marketing campaigns, you can clearly see which types of leads actually buy, what type of content people want to interact with, where your leads fall out of the marketing funnel, and how quickly your team needs to act to lock down purchases. Analytics also provides clear conversion rates and ROI data that can help you manage your marketing investment more effectively.
SEO & Paid Media
So you’ve automated your email campaigns and social media scheduling. Why not your SEO and other paid media, as well? Running your paid and organic campaigns from one central marketing tool ensures you have a single interface for all your needs.
Do you want to see how your website and marketing tactics stand up against your competitors? Are you interested in custom website landing pages and lead capture forms? Automation software for SEO and paid media can offer you analytics, metrics, and targeting in one simple interface. It makes your job easier and provides maximum insight into the potential success of a campaign. With customized landing page builders, auto-generated ads based on your chosen keywords and phrases, and personalized customer targeting, these software tools can enhance everything about your paid campaigns.
4. Finances
You’re looking for more efficiency and speed when automating your various processes. Instead of spending time on finance and accounting, your employees could be interacting with customers and suppliers! With automated financing operations, you free up employees to interact with more essential parts of your organization, and you may end up reducing processing and billing costs by up to 60%! Let an app do it for you and discover how easy it is to send invoices, get paid, and more. Some of the most common software automation for finances include:
- Supply Chain
- Sales Orders
- Billing & Collections
- Invoicing & Payments
- Tendencies Reports
- Order to Cash
- Procure to Pay
- Paystub Generation
Why Use Workflow Automation Software?
So, it’s pretty clear that you can use automation in nearly every sector of your business. It can lower operating costs, provide more data, improve ROI, and much more. With such powerful tools, there has to be a downside, right? Combining all these automation tools can make your processes a little more complex at first, but the benefits are absolutely worth the effort.
More Data
You want to better understand your customers, operations, financials, and sales funnels. The best way to gain a more comprehensive overview of your company is with more data.
With marketing workflow automation software, your team can dive deep into customer segmentation, build more targeted lead nurturing campaigns, and close more sales. All the new data you generate from your everyday successes are analyzed through your marketing tools and show you the impact everything has on your company.
If you’re using recruitment automation, you’re also increasing your knowledge of the best recruitment strategies, the requirements of candidates seeking similar positions, and the number of applicants that can potentially fill an open role. You can modify your job posting details, salary range, and benefits options based on what candidates are doing.
Lower Operating Costs
At the end of the day, software costs less than people. While the initial transition may cost you a little more for startup and training, once your systems are running, you can rely on them instead of hiring extra staff to manage processes. Computers are more efficient, and they can send out responses to form fills, alert team members of a relevant status change, and so much more.
There are many tools out there that can help get your company back in the black and save more in the long run, and one such tool is industry specific software. For instance, you can lower an automotive repair shop’s costs by using a fully featured auto repair shop software. What’s even better is that most industry specific software is cloud-based and integrates with other tools that are vital for business processes. Save money when you save your employees time because they no longer need to finish tasks manually or individually when issues arise. Let your software handle it all!
Centralized Tools
For processes that have a lot of moving parts, like hiring and training or marketing, a centralized tool is ideal.
With hiring and training tools, you can have one centralized LMS to keep track of new hires and their training. In addition, you can integrate compliance documentation and certification updates into their profile to ensure everything is up to date.
When it comes to marketing automation software, a centralized tool offers you control over all of your content in one place. From contact forms and email campaigns to social media posts and website content, some software automation systems let you do it all in one program. You might have to shop around to find the one that perfectly complements your needs, so check the features list carefully to make sure you’re buying the right software for you.
Improving ROI
Your return on investment (ROI) is a number that you can find by dividing your net profits by your operating costs. When you multiply this total by 100, you get the ROI percentage. When your ROI is high, it means you’re making much more than you’re spending. Because automation software can save you money throughout all of your business operations, your initial investment amount is even lower. You may want to compare the cost of automation software vs. the cost of the human resources they’re replacing to determine exactly how much you’re saving.
Additionally, workflow automation software increases your team’s efficiency and helps you bring in more qualified leads. When you can quantify the cost-savings for these changes, you can see an even more accurate depiction of how your ROI changes with the addition of automation software.
Reporting & Analytics
You’ve already seen how automation software can help you gain more data, both internally and externally. But what do you do with all that data once you have it? You need reporting and analytics software to help you make sense of all the information you’re receiving. Whether it’s recruiting, inventory, or marketing campaigns, knowing what the data means will help you adjust your company’s processes. With all this insight, you can also operate proactively, preparing for company expansion and growth.
Finding the Right Software
Determining which workflow automation software is best for you can be difficult because there are so many options out there. You may also find that sometimes your team can handle certain processes without automation more efficiently and effectively. Once you decide which processes actually need automation, you can start browsing the variety of software available.
As you shop around, look at listed features, integration compatibility, A/B testing functions, reporting tools, and scalability to ensure you’re getting what you need now and for the future. You might also want to explore software tools that offer free demos, as testing the functionality in real-world applications before you buy can teach you a lot about operational compatibility and help you save money — especially if it turns out the software isn’t right for you.
Take the first step towards automation when you search for software tools based on required features, integrations, company size, and location.
