Small Business Automation Trends to Watch in 2020

Indisputably, in the context of continuously changing market conditions, and multitasking ambiance, business automation is a real breakout allowing to accelerate the workflow, advance efficiency, and reduce risks. The trend for automation has already started becoming a reality for businesses around the globe, being integrated into the corporate culture and everyday office routine. 

But what does the year 2020 have in store regarding smart tech tools and how can they advance your business processes? Well, let’s have a look.

Essential Tools for Efficient Workflow Management

Running a business, it is extremely important to stay productive and keep things structured, no matter what kind of enterprise you represent. Time is money after all! Definitely, you are well aware of how much time important yet monotonous daily tasks can steal. In case you are fed up with manual import/export of contacts from/to CRM systems or email platforms, adding tasks into Google Calendar by hand, checking missed payments and transactions, and performing dozens of other manual tasks, you will surely be happy to find out that the issue has quite a simple and effective solution. 

To make all your daily apps work together like a Swiss clock, implement such useful automation platforms as Zapier or IFTTT into your working routine. What are your benefits? As these tools will help you set up automated actions between the online apps you use on an everyday basis, including all popular messengers, CRM systems, and marketing platforms, you win the time you’ve previously spent on repetitive manual tasks and be able to concentrate on other priorities like customer engagement, strategy development, business meetings with partners, etc. 

Accounting Software for Spotless Synchronization

Did you know that about 82% of small businesses fail due to poor cash flow management? Quite a solid reason to seriously consider your approach to accounting, isn’t it? It is often the case that at the first stages of any company’s development, owing to the impossibility to hire a professional accountant, all budget management falls on the shoulders of a business owner, being a destruction from other important duties. Familiar scenario? If yes, you must have been thinking of some automation solutions, and it’s absolutely justified.

Though the whole automation thing is not able to replace an experienced accountant, professional automation software will make your life a lot easier by automatically performing  import of transactions into accounting programs, enhancing the accuracy of calculation, and accelerating the overall time you spend on calculation. Sounds promising, doesn’t it?

Speaking about the ways of optimizing your accounting routine and making the whole process much faster, it is reasonable to draw your attention to such an app as Synder.

Undoubtedly, this tool will become a lifesaver for those who keep their books using accounting software such as Quickbooks and Xero. The users can benefit from the fast automatic synchronization of transactions right into their QuickBooks or Xero accounts from several online payment systems, including PayPal, Stripe, and Square. Such automation allows getting all books ready for the spotless tax reports and flawless reconciliation in a matter of minutes.

In case you are not sure whether to implement this tool into your business workflow, you should know that Synder provides a user-friendly intuitive interface, handy functional, varied choice of service plans, and, no less importantly, timely live support via chat, phone, and email. All in all, the experience is definitely worth the try.

Savvy Conversational Chatbots for Online Support

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continues revolutionizing all business sectors at a breathtaking pace, giving way to the implementation of more smart solutions in many spheres, from e-commerce to banking. Planning to enter the market with a startup or already own a small business? Then you are probably overwhelmed, searching for ways to improve the overall experience of your customers, engaging minimum resources and costs.

It is obvious that organizing a solid support team takes a while but the torrent of customers’ questions will increase by degrees. In such a case, launching a conversational chatbot on your website or app becomes a smart and forward-thinking decision as the AI technologies can handle a bunch of everyday issues. 

Thus, such digital assistants will be able to relieve you and your workers of such pain points as supporting one-to-one conversations in real time which can be impossible because of the timezone as well as monotonous answering the frequently asked questions and simple clients’ requests. Consequently, apart from timely customer service, you save additional time for solving some other urgent matters.

Still don’t have a savvy chatbot? You may, for instance, use HubSpot software solutions (or similar) which makes it possible creating and customizing your ideal chatbot yourself via special templates. And no, you don’t need to be a supercoder to build such a digital helper independently!

Fruitful Email Marketing for Building Ties with Clients

No one can deny the importance of email marketing campaigns for the whole prosperity of business. However, it is not always easy to make emailing a truly powerful tool due to the shortness of resources or simple lack of time.

In case you decided to use email marketing as a regular pattern, keep an eye on such tools as Campaign Monitor, SendinBlue, and MailChimp, standing among the best on the email marketing landscape. 

Using these platforms, you may wave goodbye to manual sending of hundreds of emails and manual segmentation of contacts. Plus, you may schedule email campaigns for any time you like and they will be sent to your contact list automatically without your assistance. Among other obvious advantages of automated email marketing are the possibility to create personalized campaigns instead of manual adding each name to each email, fast and easy building of emails with beautiful modern templates, and convenient A/B testing, all helping you to reach a large number of customers and push up sales. Remember to protect and give value to your automated emails with a DMARC report.

In addition, any successful business communication, email marketing in particular, requires flawless literacy. But we physically can’t check every word in a dictionary or have someone to proofread each of our masterpieces… or can? Fortunately, nowadays there are several spell checker and grammar tools available that can help prevent spelling errors and protect your brand’s reputation. In case you’re looking for different options for any reason, here they are!

ProWritingAid is a great choice of a “wise” grammar app, having better value for money and being highly competitive in terms of improving the readability and grammar mistakes. The other proofreading apps you may confidently use include Ginger and WhiteSmoke brilliantly proved themselves as reliable helpers as well. 

Mobile Apps for Comfortable User Experience

Taking into consideration the trends of present-day reality, more and more people tend to use mobile devices in many cases: from business communication to online booking and shopping. In fact, it is something that small businesses all over the globe should take into account in order to increase the prospects of success of their performance.

As a simple website is not enough for a company since customers actively move away from their computer screens, your business can start providing personalized user approach via mobile apps. Why? Firstly, a mobile app is one more channel to engage and grow your audience. Secondly, mobile apps usually offer a more intuitive interface making a user experience smoother. And thirdly, most mobile apps can run without the Internet and offer content to customers in offline mode so users can access the information about your company and services anywhere (not performing some online tasks but still).

If you find an implementation of a mobile app a reasonable solution for your business, you can easily design the one using such online mobile app builders as Appy Pie, BuildFire, or Firebase.

To sum up, forehanded automation is, indeed, a great thing helping you to free up much time and utterly focus on developing and enhancing your business. Luckily, the variety of modern technologies makes the whole process as easy as pie. What automation tools work for your business?