WHY SMEs NEED AUTOMATION SERVICES TO BOOST THEIR GROWTH
Victor Botto – Head of Digital Solution Sales Standard newspaper
Automation is typically perceived to be the forte of large corporates to simplify their business operations amongst the various departments or functions. SMEs shy from automation due to the consideration of the perceived amount of investment required to roll-out an automation program. The truth of the matter is SMEs can leverage automation to bring efficiencies to their processes while scaling their business. This will take the focus from the mundane repetitive tasks leaving them to focus on their key business drivers to scale and effectively compete against the bigger players within their industries.
Most SMEs have employed a limited number of resources to perform multiple functions / roles and tasks and time management is critical to ensure the goal of the SME is met. You may find a resource performing operations and administrative tasks. Leveraging automation to handle some of the repetitive operational tasks such as performing daily reconciliations using software robots to autonomously perform the task can free up capacity for the human to engage in more value adding tasks as client engagement.
Starting automation at a small scale has the advantage that the automation service is embedded in the SME culture and structures at an early stage that grows organically as the organization scales. It primarily won’t be a new technology they are onboarding and trying to fix it in the organization but that the organization will scale with the existing automation and incorporate more sophisticated automation capabilities such as Artificially Intelligent robots to adapt to the growing business and significantly increase the efficiencies.
The key driver for automation is data. Harnessing the power of data at an SME level can aid in trend monitoring and predicting of future business. This will enable them make optimal investments as they scale up their operations. Automation helps in reducing errors and streamlining operations which is beneficial to SMEs as they set the right precedent and structure to their processes as well as reduce the potential for human errors.
Automating Marketing functions such as social media account impressions and translating this to data driven models enable them get greater insights on the interactions and demographics for market segmentation. Augmenting customer care function by using chatbots that autonomously handle client engagements and typically the human involvement only comes in case the client query is complex also frees up capacity for customer service teams who need not handle the basic interactions of “how to’s” that are relatively structured in steps and responses.
Another key component of automating in SMEs is right from the get-go the consistency of services and processes is attained at an early on stage. Reducing the subjectivity in most standard processes or steps can help you develop “brand signature” and can be a key differentiator in your sales, customer engagement and marketing processes.
