Wouldn’t it be great if you could get some of those time-consuming little tasks done for you automatically? Good news—with the wave of a wand, you can! 🪄
These days, task automation is no longer elusive. With cloud computing costs at an all-time low and advancements in no-code tools, it’s now easier than ever to automate more and more tasks. It’s a no-brainer. But where to get started?
In this post, we’ll outline some of the benefits of task automation, identify which tasks can be automated, and provide you with some task automation software options to choose from.
5 big benefits of task automation
What is task automation good for?
1. Increasing productivity
Repetitive, mundane, manual tasks can be pretty demotivating for employees. Research from Gallup revealed that disengaged and unmotivated employees cost businesses around 18% of their annual salary in lost productivity. It stands to reason that highly-engaged employees who aren’t bogged down with tedious tasks will be far more happy and productive. No-brainer. 😄
2. Boosting growth
As a business grows, more people are generally needed to fill the increasing number of roles. But if you apply task automation in certain areas (e.g. data entry, sales, recruitment, outreach, or payroll) you can create greater efficiencies that let you be smarter with your hiring and onboarding. Automating more tasks helps you scale faster and more sustainably.
Also, task automation helps your existing employees become more productive—which boosts growth because they can focus on more meaningful value-add tasks. For instance, a sales rep can spend more time nurturing their relationships with prospects if they don’t have to waste time chucking contact details into a spreadsheet or clunky CRM database.
3. Reducing human error
When people complete repetitive and mundane tasks, they’re more likely to be error-prone because it’s natural to lose focus when doing the same thing repeatedly. In fact, research suggests repetitive manual tasks such as data entry are up to 40% more likely to result in human error than more engaging tasks. 😴
4. Consistency
Suppose you decide to use a task automation tool that allows you to automatically pull up a really awesome email template for a sales lead (hint hint, Magical 😉). Now imagine, you could share that template across your sales team. In this case, you’d be able to develop complete consistency across your team—grammar, tone… everything.
And if you tweak and optimize this template in line with sales performance data (i.e. the numbers game—which messaging gets the best return?) then you can roll out the best template for each scenario. Abracadabra - you have consistent messaging and consistent performance.
5. Saving costs:
Considering all the above, you’ll be looking at pretty incredible cost savings. Better productivity, less staff needed, fewer costly errors to fix, and consistently good performance. It all adds up to help you reduce unnecessary expenses and keep overheads at a minimum.
How do you automate tasks magically? 🪄
Magical makes tasks disappear. It’s a no-code solution—just a simple Chrome extension that you add to your browser and it works wherever you work on the web:
- Sheets that fill themselves Move data from your open tabs to Google Sheets with one click. No more toggling back-and-forth between various tabs, and no more correcting those copy-paste errors.
- A smarter text expander Never type the same thing over and over. Summon frequently-used text and automatically populate your recipient’s personal details into a template without taking your hands off the keyboard.
- Data entry you won’t hate Autofill form fields in a snap. Create new records instantly anywhere—even in your internal sales, customer service, or applicant tracking software.
How to automate tasks in your business—and which software helps?
What kind of tasks can be automated?
It makes sense to apply task automation to as many stages of a process or workflow as possible so you can maximize your productivity and accuracy.
But sadly, task automation can’t be applied to every single job you need to do.
Just think of a manufacturing assembly line. The type of assembly line activities that can be automated by robotics are simple and repetitive tasks, such as screwing lids on jars or tightening bolts. Many of the more complex, custom, and creative tasks still tend to be done by humans. Most assembly lines use a combination of automated and manual processes.
In terms of office-based or service business activities, each task needs to have certain characteristics to make it suitable for task automation:
- Simple
- Frequent
- Methodical
- Scheduled
In practice, this might include jobs such as:
- Emailing. Think automatic replies or forwarding based on triggers, templated responses, and pre-scheduled mailshots. These are all examples of email automation.
And what tool is used for automating tasks to do with emailing? 3 of the best automation tools for email include ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, and Autopilot.
- Invoicing and bill paying. Financial task automation software will help you save heaps of time on repeat invoices, bill processing, expense tracking, record keeping, and other money stuff.
3 of the best automation tools for finance: Tipalti, Precoro, and Airbase.
- Writing and typing. Cut down on the time you spend on sales and recruiting outreach, and speed up your customer service comms with a smart text expander.
What’s the best automation tool for typing text? Naturally, we’re going to say the Magical app. But don’t just take our word for it. 10,000+ companies think the same, including big-hitters like Disney, Uber, Salesforce, and Facebook.
- Social media marketing. Write posts in advance, and schedule them to go out later. No need to log in and publish posts manually.
3 of the best automation tools for social: Hootsuite, Buffer, and SocialPilot.
- Data entry. Transferring data into a spreadsheet or business system is one of the most mind-numbing tasks around. So why not get a bit of cheeky automation involved?
We’re going to toot our own horn again here and suggest you check out Magical. You can use Magical to automatically feed accurate data from the web (e.g. contact details) into whatever platform you’re using—spreadsheets or a CRM / ATS.
- Scheduling meetings. How’s 2pm on 5th August for you? What about 10am on the 6th? This kind of back-and-forth is a time-sap. You can—and should—automate it.
3 of the best automation tools for scheduling: Calendly, SimplyBook, and Acuvity.
Helpfully, there’s task automation software out there for most jobs you’ll need to juggle.
Your next steps for simple task automation
You can use heavy-hitting tools to integrate different business systems with one another, but if you’re looking for simple automation of everyday repetitive tasks, Magical is the app for you.
Magical is a no-code solution that helps you speed up your work. Simply add it to Chrome and you’ll be able to work more efficiently across 10,000+ websites and platforms. Using Magical, sales teams have saved over 42 years of time, recruiters have saved 8 years of time, and customer support teams have saved over 356 years of time. 🤯
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