Technology is getting smarter every year, and new applications are emerging seemingly out of nowhere at a tremendous pace. It’s virtually impossible to imagine the modern workplace without a broad array of hardware and software tools. In fact, there is a trend towards automation of numerous business tasks, especially those that are routine or repetitive. Some of the business functions that can be automated are actually quite advanced, and we are way past the era when out-of-office emails were the pinnacle of pre-programmed activity. Here are several business tasks that can conveniently be trusted to the machines:
1. Social media posting. You don’t have to be constantly logged on to all of the company accounts in order to ensure a steady stream of posts. There are automated dashboards that let you post on several different social platforms with a single click, saving you a great amount of time and effort. It’s even possible to prepare a large number of posts in advance and have them automatically published at pre-arranged times, keeping your customers engaged even while you are away from your office.
2. Invoicing. Many companies work with the same circle of clients month after month, so sending invoices that look very much the same can feel very repetitive. That’s why smart finance professionals use automated queries to collect all task reports from the current month and calculate the exact amounts for every client. There are numerous invoice processing tools available in the market, but sometimes it’s necessary to pay for custom software development in order to gain this functionality.
3. Travel management. You probably think that you need a personal assistant to take care of your travel details and prepare an itinerary, but in reality this job can be performed very well by a software app. Smart software tools can extract the important info from your emails and organize it in a logical format that allows you to simply follow the prescribed steps. Since you always have your smartphone with you while you travel, your digital assistant will be able to make adjustments on the fly if your plans suddenly change.
4. Event registration. Large events with hundreds of participants and dozens of speakers can present quite an administrative challenge. Instead of paying temp workers to handle all applications and send travel instructions and accreditations to the accepted participants, you can install and configure a software package that will take care of the lion’s share of the registration process on its own. Not only can you save on operational expenses in this way, but you can also make the registration more orderly and error-free.
5. Customer support. Answering emails and phone calls from customers is very time-consuming, so in the past companies often outsourced this task to a call center. A more economical option is to use a sophisticated knowledge base that can automatically guide the customer to the appropriate answer. In recent years, companies are even using chatbots to handle live communication with the customers, although this approach may be seen as too generic, especially in the service sector where complex explanations may be required.
