‘Automa­tion sys­tems’ are the tools, soft­ware, and tech­nolo­gies designed to per­form repet­i­tive, man­u­al, or time-con­sum­ing tasks for the pur­pos­es of reduc­ing or min­imis­ing human intervention.

Busi­ness­es that use automa­tions find that these sys­tems improve effi­cien­cy, free up resources, and even reduce errors. As a result, oper­a­tional costs are often low­ered as these auto­mat­ed tasks take less time than before. If the busi­ness wants to grow, the automa­tions already in place are easy to scale with­out incur­ring pro­por­tion­al costs.

Depend­ing on what process­es a busi­ness decides to auto­mate, they may see improved cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, more thor­ough­ly trained staff, quick­er sales cycles, or more effi­cient inven­to­ry man­age­ment (to men­tion just a few!).

The beau­ty of automa­tions is that their func­tions are end­less and can be imple­ment­ed across a wide vari­ety of indus­tries. What­ev­er your busi­ness’s spe­cif­ic needs are, there will be count­less automa­tions you could imple­ment to save you time, mon­ey, and resources.

This arti­cle will explore the dif­fer­ent types of automa­tion sys­tems, give you some top tips for using them, and rec­om­mend 5 that will opti­mise your oper­a­tions. Let’s dive in:

Types of business automation systems

It’s impor­tant that busi­ness­es know about the dif­fer­ent types of automa­tion because not all automa­tion solu­tions are equal­ly suit­ed to every organisation.

If you under­stand the options avail­able to your com­pa­ny, you can select the tools and process­es that align with your goals, resources, and oper­a­tional chal­lenges. For exam­ple, e‑commerce busi­ness­es may pri­ori­tise mar­ket­ing and inven­to­ry automa­tion while SaaS com­pa­nies might choose to focus on cus­tomer sup­port and sub­scrip­tion billing automation.

Here are sev­er­al types of automa­tion sys­tems that you should be aware of:

• Cus­tomer rela­tion­ship man­age­ment: automat­ing tasks like email fol­low-ups, lead track­ing, and cus­tomer seg­men­ta­tion. E.g., Hubspot.
• Cus­tomer sup­port: using chat­bots to resolve cus­tomer queries. E.g., Zendesk.
• Mar­ket­ing: you could auto­mate cam­paigns, emails, social media sched­ul­ing, and per­son­alised cus­tomer jour­neys. E.g., Mailchimp
• Sales: automat­ing things like lead scor­ing, pipeline man­age­ment, and pro­pos­al gen­er­a­tion. E.g., Freshsales
• Human resources: stream­lin­ing pay­roll, recruit­ment, onboard­ing, and per­for­mance track­ing. E.g., Workday.
• Finance and account­ing: automat­ing invoic­ing, expense track­ing, tax cal­cu­la­tions, and finan­cial report­ing. E.g., Xero.
• Sup­ply chain and inven­to­ry man­age­ment: automat­ing order pro­cess­ing, logis­tics track­ing, and the man­age­ment of inven­to­ry lev­els. E.g., SAP.
• Work­flow: automat­ing rou­tine tasks and work­flows, ensur­ing projects and assign­ments progress smooth­ly. E.g., Asana and Zapier.
• Oper­a­tions and process: stream­lin­ing repet­i­tive oper­a­tional process­es like man­u­fac­tur­ing, pack­ag­ing, and qual­i­ty checks. E.g., Blue Prism.
• IT: automat­ing serv­er man­age­ment, soft­ware updates, and secu­ri­ty checks. E.g., Ansible.

Evi­dent­ly, automa­tion has infil­trat­ed what seems like every busi­ness process – there is a lot to choose from. How­ev­er, automa­tion can be cost­ly upfront in terms of time, mon­ey, and effort. Busi­ness­es should only auto­mate process­es that are repet­i­tive, prone to human error and con­sume sig­nif­i­cant time and effort with­out adding much strate­gic value.

While automat­ing some­thing like pay­roll makes sense for a mid-sized busi­ness with a large team, a sole trad­er who con­tracts a cou­ple of free­lancers might not find it necessary.

It’s cru­cial that busi­ness­es are wary of over-automa­tion. Tasks that require human cre­ativ­i­ty, deci­sion-mak­ing, or per­son­al touch should be guard­ed care­ful­ly, as automat­ing these may harm cus­tomer expe­ri­ences or cre­ate gener­ic con­tent. There will be a sweet spot where automat­ing adds val­ue and oth­er tasks are left for skilled team mem­bers to perfect.

5 automation systems that save you time and money

Here are 5 automa­tions, for dif­fer­ent busi­ness oper­a­tions, that will help you become more efficient:

1. Zapier

Zapi­er con­nects over 7,000 web appli­ca­tions, enabling busi­ness­es to auto­mate repet­i­tive tasks with­out the need for cod­ing or devel­op­er assistance.

By cre­at­ing auto­mat­ed work­flows, known as Zaps, busi­ness­es can stream­line things like:

• Adding leads to your CRM and fol­low­ing up.
• Sched­ul­ing and post­ing con­tent on mul­ti­ple social media platforms.
• Sync­ing data across appli­ca­tions like Google Sheets and project man­age­ment tools.
• Gen­er­at­ing cus­tomer sup­port tick­ets and ensur­ing respons­es are timely.

2. Zendesk

Zen­desk is a com­pre­hen­sive cus­tomer ser­vice plat­form designed to enhance cus­tomer sup­port and engage­ment. It offers lots of tools, includ­ing a tick­et­ing sys­tem, live chat, knowl­edge base, and ana­lyt­ics to stream­line cus­tomer inter­ac­tions. It inte­grates with oth­er appli­ca­tions to enhance its func­tion­al­i­ty, such as your CRM sys­tem, project man­age­ment tool, or e‑commerce platform.

Zen­desk’s tick­et­ing sys­tem keeps cus­tomer inquiries from var­i­ous chan­nels (email, chat, social media, and phone) all in one uni­fied dash­board, allow­ing staff to man­age and pri­ori­tise tick­ets effi­cient­ly. Fur­ther­more, Zen­desk also allows you to cre­ate a hub of infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ty forums that cus­tomers can access, so that they can find their own answers and reduce the vol­ume of cus­tomer enquiries.

Busi­ness­es can also use Zen­desk to cre­ate trig­gers that set off rou­tine actions (direct­ing tick­ets, send­ing noti­fi­ca­tions, and updat­ing tick­et sta­tus­es). As such, Zen­desk is par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fi­cial for cus­tomer sup­port teams, e‑commerce busi­ness­es, and large organ­i­sa­tions that han­dle big vol­umes of cus­tomer enquiries.

Like oth­er automa­tion tools, the sheer effi­cien­cy that Zen­desk offers will reduce the need for addi­tion­al staff and can boost cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. How­ev­er, it may be over­ly com­plex for small­er businesses.

3. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is pri­mar­i­ly recog­nised for its email mar­ket­ing capa­bil­i­ties, allow­ing busi­ness­es to send engag­ing and per­son­alised mes­sages to their mail­ing list subscribers.

Cus­tomer Jour­ney Builder allows you to cre­ate auto­mat­ed mar­ket­ing paths for dif­fer­ent cus­tomers. Plus, busi­ness­es can use seg­men­ta­tion, behav­iour­al tar­get­ing, and cam­paign track­ing to strength­en performance.

Busi­ness­es best suit­ed to using Mailchimp include small to medi­um-sized busi­ness­es and e‑commerce busi­ness­es. This is due to its user-friend­ly inter­face and scal­able fea­tures, which make it suit­able for busi­ness­es with vary­ing mar­ket­ing needs. Mailchimp inte­grates with var­i­ous e‑commerce plat­forms, enabling these busi­ness­es to auto­mate prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions and fol­low-up emails.

Mailchim­p’s free plan allows users to send up to 1,000 emails per month to 500 con­tacts, pro­vid­ing a no-cost option for automat­ing your email mar­ket­ing oper­a­tions. How­ev­er, if your con­tact lists grow, costs may increase, so you should be cau­tious and ensure Mailchimp con­tin­ues to be a cost-effec­tive solu­tion for your organisation.

4. SAP

SAP is a lead­ing provider of enter­prise resource plan­ning (ERP) soft­ware, inte­grat­ing var­i­ous busi­ness process­es across finance, sup­ply chain, sales, human resources, and more. Its main prod­uct (SAP S/4HANA) is designed to stream­line oper­a­tions and pro­vide real-time insights to sup­port decision-making.

SAP’s ERP sys­tems facil­i­tate automa­tion in sev­er­al key areas:

• Finance and accounting
• Human resources
• Sup­ply chain management
• Dis­tri­b­u­tion and sales

SAP’s ERP solu­tions are par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fi­cial for large oper­a­tions, those with com­plex sup­ply chains, and those want­i­ng to cater to a glob­al audi­ence. As such, it can be pret­ty com­plex, time-con­sum­ing, and expen­sive to set up. So, you’ll need the bud­get and tech­ni­cal exper­tise to pull it off. How­ev­er, the large enter­pris­es that are best suit­ed to SAP are going to be the ones that are able to shoul­der these ini­tial challenges.

Once that ini­tial set-up is com­plete, SAP will offer the same ben­e­fits as oth­er automa­tion sys­tems: oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy, increased pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, instant access to cur­rent busi­ness data, and scal­a­bil­i­ty. Like with all of these tools, you’ll know what option to pick if you’re aware of your busi­ness’s unique needs.

5. Workday

Work­day is a cloud-based man­age­ment plat­form that inte­grates human resources, finance, and plan­ning func­tion­al­i­ties into a uni­fied sys­tem. Designed to adapt to evolv­ing busi­ness needs, Work­day offers tools to stream­line oper­a­tions and improve organ­i­sa­tion­al agility.

Work­day’s fea­tures include:

• Human Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment (HCM): this is a uni­fied sys­tem for man­ag­ing glob­al work­forces (includ­ing recruit­ment, onboard­ing, tal­ent man­age­ment, and payroll).
• Finan­cial man­age­ment: tools for account­ing, expense man­age­ment, pro­cure­ment, and finan­cial planning.
• Plan­ning and ana­lyt­ics: advanced ana­lyt­ics and report­ing capa­bil­i­ties allow you to make data-dri­ven deci­sions and adapt to mar­ket changes.

With these fea­tures on offer, Work­day is par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fi­cial for 1) medi­um to large enter­pris­es with com­plex struc­tures and exten­sive oper­a­tional needs, 2) com­pa­nies want­i­ng to mod­ernise their HR and finan­cial sys­tems, and 3) busi­ness­es in sec­tors such as finance, health­care, and edu­ca­tion who need robust com­pli­ance and report­ing tools.

Work­day can be pret­ty flex­i­ble to your busi­ness’s needs, sup­port­ing over 600 inte­gra­tions and offer­ing APIs for cus­tom ones. How­ev­er, Work­day can be prici­er than oth­er solu­tions and its exten­sive fea­tures may require train­ing before being used confidently.

Before you automate your business operations

Before you auto­mate your busi­ness oper­a­tions, there are some impor­tant things to consider.

First­ly, you’ll need to think about which tasks or process­es would ben­e­fit most from automa­tion. As we men­tioned before, it could harm your busi­ness to auto­mate too much. Next, think about whether the automa­tion tool you pick can inte­grate with the sys­tems you already have in place. Your busi­ness might not be in a posi­tion where it can go through an exten­sive oper­a­tional upheaval, so any new solu­tions should be care­ful­ly planned.

When you’ve got your mind set on automat­ing some­thing, get down in words why it should be auto­mat­ed. Is it repet­i­tive or prone to errors? Would this automa­tion align with my busi­ness goals? Then, write down how exact­ly automa­tion will improve things. If your expec­ta­tions are clear going in, you’ll be in a bet­ter posi­tion down the line to analyse the effi­ca­cy of the tool.

If you go ahead with automa­tion, it’s a good idea to start small. Plus, you must make sure that staff are feel­ing con­fi­dent using them. Pro­vid­ing train­ing will ensure that your new­ly auto­mat­ed busi­ness oper­a­tions are run­ning smooth­ly and sustainably.

Final thoughts

Automa­tion sys­tems are pow­er­ful tools for doing busi­ness, enabling you to remain com­pet­i­tive and focus more on inno­va­tion and cus­tomer satisfaction.

Tools like Zapi­er, Zen­desk, Mailchimp, SAP, and Work­day offer your busi­ness a vari­ety of ways to stream­line what­ev­er oper­a­tions you wish, help­ing to increase pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and reduce costs.

But as with all things, automa­tion sys­tems come with a learn­ing curve. If you want some help with imple­ment­ing automa­tions, reach out to us here at purpleplanet.

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