That’s really no surprise, right? If you have a desk job, you’re bound to spend some time doing data entry and document management. But do you have to be? Here are four of the most crucial areas of business that could be automated right now.
1. SSL Certificate Management
Last year, thousands of users failed to make or receive VoIP calls due to a major Google Voice outage. Who was to blame, you ask? Well, it’s not a who but a what—and it’s none other than expired security certificates. The blunt truth is that unexpected certificate expirations and undocumented certificate installations cause unavoidable outages, leading to tainted brand images and massive financial losses for businesses. You certainly wouldn’t want your business to incur these similar repercussions. Clunky spreadsheets and tedious manual processes are certainly not the best ways to manage your digital certificates. Investing in an end-to-end SSL certificate manager is prudent to steer clear of this chaos. Sectigo, for example, is purpose-built to issue and manage the lifecycles of public and private digital certificates to secure every human and machine across the enterprise, all from a single platform.
2. Office Management
As a business owner, there are some administrative tasks that you cannot take for granted, and automation works well for such tasks. Take job recruitment, for example. You can instantly post job openings to all the desired job-hunting websites using software automation. Another aspect of your office operations that could and should be automated is reminders. By leaving the nitty-gritty to automated bots, you can share important meeting dates and times with your employees with one click of a button. This saves you so much time that you would have to spend on sending emails.
3. Your Customer Service Operations
Consumer behavior shifted dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, creating lasting effects on the business world. Many customers now expect and insist upon online self-serve options. With this knowledge, you risk losing many of your customers shortly if you insist on keeping your customer service processes manual. The benefits of automated customer service abound. Not only will your customers enjoy faster replies on their tickets, but your agents will also have an easier time being free of repetitive tickets. What’s more, you’ll save crucial minutes in one workday—minutes you can channel to more productive tasks that push the needle for your business.
4. Financial Processes
Finally, arguably the hardest part for most businesses— automating your company’s finances. If you’re moving or manipulating the same data repeatedly, month after month, it would be best to automate your financial planning and analysis (FP&A) processes as soon as possible. Why? Because automated systems for finance and accounting teams take time-sensitive, repetitive tasks and put them on autopilot, freeing up work hours and bandwidth. So, where should you start? Generally, you want to automate finance functions consistently and repeatedly, such as payroll and bill payments. Payroll software, for instance, automatically calculates and deducts state and federal taxes from your employee’s wages. It also handles payroll tax support and payments. On the other hand, Bill payment software works by managing your accounts payable process, from receiving an invoice to paying suppliers. Simultaneously, the software maintains all your existing banking relationships and workflows. How’s that for convenience and time savings?
Get One Step Ahead of the Competition with Business Process Automation
As the pace of business quickens, knowing how to take a strategic approach to automation will give you and your team a clear competitive advantage. And remember: if you don’t automate, your competition surely will. The best time to automate key areas of your business was yesterday; the second-best time is today.
