Time is an incredibly valuable resource in business. Businesses need to use their time as efficiently as possible and automation is one of the best ways a business can make this happen. Automating portions of a business can mean the difference between spending hours each day on repetitive tasks or generating valuable sales.
Fortunately, technological innovation in recent years has made automating one’s business easier than ever. Consequently, this post will cover a few different automation services that can regularly save businesses time and allow them to make more money in the process.
TaxJar: For businesses that have locations in multiple states, it can be an incredible hassle to determine what is owed in sales tax. Sales tax varies widely across the country and few businesses have the time to sort out sales tax in every jurisdiction. TaxJar automates the process of calculating sales tax and ensures businesses no longer have to worry whether they’re charging their customers a tenth of a percent too much or too little in sales tax.
Buffer: Social media marketing seems to grow more important with every passing day. That said, regularly posting on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms can quickly become very time-consuming. Buffer saves you time by allowing you to manage content for all your different social media platforms in one place. It also automates your activity, allowing you to schedule posts ahead of time.
Slack: Simple communication within a company can easily eat up large portions of the day. Slack allows employees to escape the email chain and communicate on their computer or mobile device in a text style format. It includes a variety of features, such as the ability to create channels for specific teams and even allows you to see if other users are currently online.
Zapier: This software allows you to set up triggers that cause an automated action. For example, someone signing up for an event could trigger the addition of their name and relevant information to a Google Sheet. Zapier can connect to over 1500 apps, meaning there’s a near-infinite number of actions that you can automate.
Mailchimp: Many businesses have email lists that are growing longer with each passing day. These email lists are an important resource that can generate significant revenue when used correctly. Mailchimp allows businesses to automate their email lists, meaning they can create targeted emails that send when triggered by a specific date, customer action, etc. If a customer recently purchased a product, a business could use Mailchimp to promote another product the customer might like based on their recent purchase.
Depending on the business, some of the automation services we mentioned above might be more useful than others. Even so, just about every business stands to benefit from automating certain portions of its workflow. If any of the automation tools we discussed here seems like a good fit for your business, be sure to let us know in the comments below!
