Automa­tions have been around for a while, but they’re get­ting smarter and more sophis­ti­cat­ed by the week. What’s excit­ing is how these advances are open­ing doors for small busi­ness­es to cut down their oper­at­ing costs dramatically.

This arti­cle delves into the world of AI automa­tions, show­ing how small busi­ness­es can use them to their advan­tage. We’ll break down how automa­tions work, explore the tools you can use to cre­ate them, and high­light some com­plex process­es they can simplify.

Whether you’re new to automa­tions or look­ing to deep­en your under­stand­ing, you’re in the right place.

How small businesses can benefit from automations

Small busi­ness­es face a unique set of chal­lenges, often revolv­ing around resource con­straints, scal­ing oper­a­tions, and main­tain­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. AI-dri­ven automa­tions can offer pow­er­ful solu­tions to these chal­lenges, enabling small busi­ness­es to oper­ate more effi­cient­ly, make data-dri­ven deci­sions, and improve cus­tomer experiences.

Here are sev­er­al exam­ples of ways AI automa­tions can help small busi­ness­es grow:

1. Streamlining operations

Small busi­ness­es often have lim­it­ed staff, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to man­age all oper­a­tions effectively.

AI can auto­mate rou­tine tasks such as sched­ul­ing, invoic­ing, and email respons­es. This frees up time for employ­ees to focus on more strate­gic tasks. For instance, AI chat­bots can han­dle basic cus­tomer inquiries 24/7.

2. Customer insights and personalisation

Under­stand­ing and engag­ing cus­tomers in a per­son­alised way, though high­ly effec­tive, can be resource-intensive.

AI algo­rithms can analyse cus­tomer data to iden­ti­fy pat­terns, pref­er­ences, and behav­iours. This infor­ma­tion can be used to per­son­alise mar­ket­ing mes­sages, rec­om­mend prod­ucts, and enhance the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence, lead­ing to increased loy­al­ty and sales with­out com­pro­mis­ing a team mem­ber’s time.

3. Marketing and social media management

Small busi­ness­es might not have the resources for exten­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paigns or con­stant social media engagement.

AI-pow­ered tools can auto­mate con­tent cre­ation, ad tar­get­ing, and social media posts. They can also analyse the effec­tive­ness of dif­fer­ent strate­gies, help­ing busi­ness­es opti­mise their mar­ket­ing efforts for bet­ter ROI.

4. Sales and CRM automation

Man­ag­ing leads and main­tain­ing rela­tion­ships with cus­tomers can be over­whelm­ing with­out a ded­i­cat­ed sales team.

AI can help in scor­ing leads, pre­dict­ing which cus­tomers are most like­ly to con­vert, and automat­ing fol­low-up com­mu­ni­ca­tions. This ensures that small busi­ness­es can focus their efforts on the most promis­ing opportunities.

5. Financial management

Keep­ing track of finances, includ­ing invoic­ing, pay­roll, and bud­get­ing, requires sig­nif­i­cant effort and can lead to errors if done manually.

AI-dri­ven finan­cial tools can auto­mate many aspects of finan­cial man­age­ment, from cat­e­goris­ing expens­es and pre­dict­ing cash flow issues to automat­ing pay­roll and flag­ging unusu­al trans­ac­tions that might indi­cate fraud.

6. Supply chain optimisation

Man­ag­ing inven­to­ry and the sup­ply chain can be com­plex, with risks of over­stock­ing or stockouts.

AI can fore­cast demand more accu­rate­ly, opti­mise inven­to­ry lev­els, and iden­ti­fy the most effi­cient deliv­ery routes. This helps small busi­ness­es reduce costs and improve cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion through time­ly deliveries.

7. Talent acquisition and HR

Hir­ing and retain­ing the right tal­ent is cru­cial but can be time-con­sum­ing for small businesses.

AI HR tools can auto­mate parts of the recruit­ment process, from screen­ing resumes to sched­ul­ing inter­views. They can also help in iden­ti­fy­ing employ­ee engage­ment lev­els and pre­dict­ing turnover, aid­ing staff reten­tion strategies.

Common automations

Automa­tions aren’t new. Most busi­ness­es already use basic automa­tions and have done so for years. Some of the most com­mon uses for automa­tions include:

• The email autore­spon­der – this is used to send imme­di­ate mes­sages to cus­tomers to con­firm orders, wel­come them to a mail­ing list, accept job appli­ca­tions, and acknowl­edge enquiries.
• Auto­mat­ic invoic­es – many busi­ness­es gen­er­ate invoic­es upon the com­ple­tion of a sale, send­ing receipts and order confirmations.
• Social media post­ing – for sev­er­al years busi­ness­es and indi­vid­u­als have been able to auto­mate their social media activ­i­ty, based on a sched­ule they choose.
• Sched­ul­ing and appoint­ments – this type is com­mon­ly used when clients book appoint­ments, which go direct­ly into a busi­ness’s cal­en­dar. Com­pa­nies can also auto­mate appoint­ment reminders.

Complex automations

Though these com­mon automa­tions are very use­ful, auto­mat­ed oper­a­tions can get a lot more cre­ative. The advent of sev­er­al dig­i­tal tools and devel­op­ments in AI have allowed automa­tions to become more com­plex, solv­ing big­ger prob­lems for small businesses:

• Triag­ing cus­tomer enquiries – AI can help analyse incom­ing cus­tomer queries, cat­e­goris­ing them into groups based on urgency, top­ic, and sen­ti­ment. This allows tick­ets to be assigned to the appro­pri­ate team mem­ber and ensures severe issues are dealt with quickly.
• Inven­to­ry man­age­ment – tools can be set up to mon­i­tor stock lev­els, auto­mat­i­cal­ly reorder prod­ucts, and check the cost of prod­ucts across mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent sup­pli­ers to get the best price.
• Lead scor­ing – busi­ness­es can cre­ate sys­tems that auto­mat­i­cal­ly score leads based on cri­te­ria like demo­graph­ics, behav­iour, and engage­ment lev­el. Sales efforts can then be focused on the high­est-scor­ing leads.
• Finan­cial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion – automa­tion tools can cross­check trans­ac­tion details (i.e., bank state­ments, invoic­es, and account­ing records). This process can reduce errors and save a sig­nif­i­cant amount of time.
• Employ­ee onboard­ing – new hires can receive wel­come emails and infor­ma­tion for nec­es­sary train­ing automatically.
• Dynam­ic pric­ing – e‑commerce busi­ness­es can use algo­rithms that auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjust prod­uct pric­ing based on real-time fac­tors (e.g., demand, com­peti­tor pric­ing, and inven­to­ry levels).

There are lit­er­al­ly count­less ways you can utilise AI and automa­tions. What­ev­er oper­a­tional issues your busi­ness may have, you’ll like­ly be able to cre­ate an auto­mat­ed solu­tion with AI. To exe­cute your ideas and cre­ate help­ful automa­tions, how­ev­er, you’ll need a tool.

Best automation tools

There are sev­er­al automa­tion tools on the mar­ket, each with their own ben­e­fits and uses:

Zapier

Zapi­er is incred­i­bly pop­u­lar for automat­ing work­flows between web appli­ca­tions. It con­nects over 3,000 apps and allows users to cre­ate automa­tions (called “Zaps”) that can auto­mate tasks between dif­fer­ent apps with­out the need for cod­ing. For exam­ple, you could set up a Zap to auto­mat­i­cal­ly save email attach­ments to Drop­box or add new email con­tacts to a CRM system.

IFTTT (If This Then That)

Sim­i­lar to Zapi­er, IFTTT is anoth­er web-based ser­vice that enables users to cre­ate chains of sim­ple con­di­tion­al state­ments, known as “applets”. These applets can auto­mate tasks between dif­fer­ent inter­net-con­nect­ed ser­vices and devices. It’s com­mon­ly used for both per­son­al and busi­ness pur­pos­es, such as post­ing the same con­tent across mul­ti­ple social media plat­forms or automat­ing smart office devices.

OpenAI API

Ope­nAI’s var­i­ous tools allow a lot of cre­ativ­i­ty for mak­ing automa­tions. A Chat API can be trained on exter­nal data­bas­es such as your com­pa­ny prod­uct or cus­tomer data. For exam­ple, you could train a cus­tomer ser­vice chat­bot on your busi­ness’s prod­ucts, enhanc­ing its abil­i­ty to answer queries.

You could cre­ate an Assis­tant with Ope­nAI’s prod­ucts to reg­u­lar­ly scrape the web e.g., for com­pet­i­tive research or pric­ing infor­ma­tion. You could get it to tran­scribe all of your meet­ings and gen­er­ate sum­maries and to-do lists. The options are endless.

Microsoft Power Automate

For Microsoft users, this tool is part of the Microsoft 365 suite and allows users to cre­ate auto­mat­ed work­flows between Microsoft appli­ca­tions and var­i­ous third-par­ty ser­vices. It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful for busi­ness­es already using Microsoft prod­ucts and it can help auto­mate tasks such as data col­lec­tion, file syn­chro­ni­sa­tion, and notifications.

HubSpot

Pri­mar­i­ly known as a mar­ket­ing, sales, and ser­vice soft­ware, Hub­Spot offers pow­er­ful automa­tion fea­tures with­in its CRM plat­form. Busi­ness­es can auto­mate email campaigns,

sales pipeline actions, and cus­tomer ser­vice process­es, mak­ing it eas­i­er to main­tain con­sis­tent com­mu­ni­ca­tion with prospects and customers.

Salesforce

As one of the lead­ing CRM solu­tions, Sales­force pro­vides exten­sive automa­tion capa­bil­i­ties across sales, cus­tomer ser­vice, mar­ket­ing, and more. Its automa­tion tools, such as Process Builder and Flow, enable busi­ness­es to auto­mate com­plex busi­ness process­es with­out writ­ing code.

QuickBooks

Wide­ly used for account­ing pur­pos­es, Quick­Books allows small to medi­um-sized busi­ness­es to auto­mate var­i­ous finan­cial process­es, includ­ing invoic­ing, billing, pay­ments, and pay­roll. This reduces man­u­al data entry and helps busi­ness­es man­age their finances more efficiently.

Asana

Asana is a project man­age­ment tool that enables teams to col­lab­o­rate more effec­tive­ly. It allows for the automa­tion of rou­tine tasks with­in projects, such as assign­ing tasks to team mem­bers based on project phas­es or trig­ger­ing reminders for dead­lines, help­ing teams stay on track and focused on their work.

Slack

Although pri­mar­i­ly a com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form, Slack offers automa­tion fea­tures through its inte­gra­tions and bots. These can auto­mate noti­fi­ca­tions for new tasks, issue alerts from oth­er apps, or even facil­i­tate sim­ple tasks direct­ly with­in Slack, enhanc­ing team com­mu­ni­ca­tion and productivity.

Demystifying automations: how do they actually work?

Automa­tion involves using tech­nol­o­gy to per­form tasks with min­i­mal human inter­ven­tion. This can range from sim­ple, sin­gle-step tasks (like send­ing an auto­mat­ed reply to an email) to com­plex, mul­ti-step work­flows (such as pro­cess­ing and ful­fill­ing an order from start to finish).

Let’s break it down into more under­stand­able parts to explain how automa­tions work:

1. Triggers and actions

Most automa­tions work on a basic prin­ci­ple of trig­gers and actions. A trig­ger is the event that starts an automa­tion. For exam­ple, you could make receiv­ing an email your automa­tion’s trig­ger. An action is what the automa­tion does in response to the trig­ger. Send­ing an auto­mat­ed reply to the received email would be the action.

2. Conditions and logic

Some automa­tions involve con­di­tions or log­ic that deter­mine when an action should occur or which action to take. Con­di­tions are spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria that must be met for an action to hap­pen. For exam­ple, an automa­tion in a CRM sys­tem might only send a fol­low-up email if a cus­tomer has­n’t respond­ed with­in 3 days.

Log­ic involves more com­plex deci­sion-mak­ing in an automa­tion, such as if-then state­ments. For exam­ple, if a cus­tomer clicks on a link in an email, then send them a fol­low-up email with more infor­ma­tion; oth­er­wise, send a dif­fer­ent email encour­ag­ing them to check out the link.

3. Integration

Automa­tions often involve inte­grat­ing dif­fer­ent soft­ware tools or plat­forms. This can be done through APIs (Appli­ca­tion Pro­gram­ming Inter­faces) or through automa­tion plat­forms like Zapi­er that pro­vide pre-built inte­gra­tions. For instance, you might have an automa­tion that inte­grates your email mar­ket­ing tool with your CRM sys­tem to update cus­tomer pro­files based on their inter­ac­tions with your emails.

You may also choose to inte­grate an email mar­ket­ing plat­form, account­ing soft­ware, ana­lyt­ics tools, project man­age­ment tools, and count­less others.

4. Workflow automation

Some automa­tions are part of larg­er work­flows, involv­ing mul­ti­ple steps, con­di­tions, and actions across dif­fer­ent tools and plat­forms. Work­flow automa­tion is par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful in busi­ness process­es, where tasks need to move from one stage or depart­ment to anoth­er with effi­cien­cy and consistency.

For exam­ple:

An online store receives a new order. Here’s a sim­pli­fied automa­tion workflow:

Trig­ger: A new order is placed on the website.

Action 1: The cus­tomer receives an auto­mat­ed order con­fir­ma­tion email.

Action 2: The order details are auto­mat­i­cal­ly sent to the inven­to­ry man­age­ment sys­tem to deduct the pur­chased item from stock.

Con­di­tion: If the item’s stock falls below a cer­tain thresh­old, then

Action 3: An auto­mat­ic restock request is sent to your supplier.

This entire process min­imis­es the need for man­u­al input, reduces the chance of errors, and ensures that the cus­tomer and stock lev­els are man­aged efficiently.

The role of AI and machine learning

In more advanced automa­tions, AI and machine learn­ing can play a sig­nif­i­cant role. They can help in under­stand­ing nat­ur­al lan­guage inputs, pre­dict­ing out­comes based on data, per­son­al­is­ing cus­tomer inter­ac­tions, and even mak­ing deci­sions with­in pre­de­fined criteria.

Final thoughts

Automa­tion is about mak­ing process­es more effi­cient by allow­ing tech­nol­o­gy to han­dle rou­tine, repet­i­tive tasks. This allows humans to focus on more com­plex, cre­ative, or strate­gic activ­i­ties. Automa­tions can range from sim­ple to com­plex, but they all work to improve effi­cien­cy, accu­ra­cy, and con­sis­ten­cy in var­i­ous operations.

With a bit of cre­ativ­i­ty, small busi­ness­es can opti­mise a whole host of oper­a­tions and focus on growth.