7 Business Automation Tools to Subscribe to in 2022
The benefits of business process automation, which is the use of technology to accomplish monotonous and tedious tasks, are immense for businesses looking to edge out the competition.
Picture yourself sitting on your cosy office chair with both legs comfortably stretched on the shiny marble desk and a digital clicker on the left hand that lets you solve all work-related tasks from negotiating complex deals with clients to the complex art of making a cup of coffee without thinking so much about the task (unlike the task I’m currently on). Gotten a picture yet?
Let’s take it a notch higher, imagine if all you do daily at work to complete your task is punching the buttons on the aforementioned digital clicker the same way you scroll TV stations at home endlessly with a TV remote control.
You must be swelling inwards at the possibility of being in such a working environment (don’t type that letter!), but I hate to be a bearer of bad news; a futuristic device like a digital clicker only exists in movies. It will probably take a hundred years to create such a device.
Key Stats About Business Automation
Back to reality, more organizations are abandoning manual business processes and jumping on the train of automation. According to a 2020 Mckinsey survey of business leaders from a wide cross-section of industries, 66% were piloting solutions to automate at least one business process, up from 57% two years earlier. Also, in a recent survey carried out by Frevvo, a leading Business Process Automation software company, 78% of business leaders believe that automating tasks in the organization increases productivity for everyone involved.
These key stats show the level of commitment and investment business owners put (and are still putting) in automating their business processes to achieve the desired results.
Business Process Automation
The benefits of business process automation, which is the use of technology to accomplish monotonous and tedious tasks, are immense for businesses looking to edge out the competition. According to a 2021 report by Zappier, another BPA software platform, on the state of business automation, 88% of small businesses say automation allows them to compete with larger companies by allowing them to move faster, close leads quickly, spend less time on dead-end works, limit errors and offer better customer service.
There are over a thousand and one business processes across industries that have been automated. From performing simple work tasks like sending an email to a prospective customer to complex accounting tasks of reconciling financial records, automating business processes is as critical as death and taxes.
But to steer your business or organization on the path of automation, the right automation tools must be used. These tools are essential to the growth and success of a company.
Here are 7 Business Automation tools your company can subscribe to in 2022:
Types of Business Automation Tools
Hubspot
HubSpot CRM platform is one of the most effective automation tools out there for businesses looking to grow their customer base at scale. It’s a marketer’s/sales expert’s delight! The platform can virtually automate all marketing, sales, and customer service processes, including capturing quality leads, sending targeted emails to prospective and existing clients or customers, blog and social media content creation and management, and customer service management.
There are five inbuilt software to get your marketing automation journey started on the HubSpot platform; the Marketing software with features like Lead generation, Market Automation, and Analytics will help you grow and convert your online visitors and run complete inbound marketing campaigns at scale, the Sales software with features like advanced CRM, Meeting Scheduling and Quotes will help you close more deals faster, the Customer Service software, Content Management software with an SEO recommendation and a Drag and Drop feature and Operations software.
It also offers integration capabilities with your favourite online tools like Gmail, All HubSpot inbuilt software comes with different pricing bundles that suit your budget needs, but you can request a demo if you are in doubt of their automation services.
Zapier
One task that truly gets tiring even for the genius walking among us is regular coding which keeps one from doing the tasks that matter. This genuine challenge is the reason no-code-based platforms like Zappier were created.
Zappier does the tricky backend coding task for you so you can concentrate on the task that matters. Its functionalities include connecting two or more everyday used apps like Teams and Gmail, creating seamless multiple workflows and automating repetitive tasks that save hours of work.
It offers flexible pricing plans that fit your company’s needs.
Wordsmith
Every business process has been automated one way or another and that includes content writing. You probably think it’s impossible to come up with an automation process for writing, well think Wordsmith. As the name suggests, this is a content automation tool that transforms data into insightful narratives. Call it the Shakespeare of numbers and you won’t be wrong.
It automatically expresses data across your organization in the most informative and conversational written tone. Powered by artificial intelligence, Wordsmith enables you to get a better understanding of your business by creating clear, concise, and insightful analysis that helps you make better data-driven decisions.
Big companies like Associated Press, Microsoft, Yahoo, and PwC use the tool to generate billions of content every year.
You can subscribe to the paid plan of $250 per 1000 articles to get started.
Microsoft Power Automate
Most Microsoft applications usually pack a punch. Some of these applications offer some form of automation; the Microsoft apps are a low-code development tool designed to create apps. Microsoft lists help manage and customize workflows. Microsoft Sway creates interacting infographics and presentations using an inbuilt design engine. But none of these applications offers an end-to-end automation process as the Microsoft Power Automate.
With Power Automate, you can create an entire automated workflow and business process. It also offers thousands of prebuilt templates to start automating common business processes.
With features like Flow where repetitive and time-consuming multistep, guided processes are automated with pre-built connectors, AI Builders to create intelligent automation and insights by building and publishing AI models without a single line of code or requiring data science skills and Process Advisor which record and visualizes end-to-end processes, Power Automate is the ultimate automation platform.
What’s best is that you can automate on the go with Power Automate Mobile. You can also seamlessly connect your workflows with other Microsoft 365 applications. Pricing for Power Automate is flexible across features.
Netsuite Financial Management
One of the most demanding business processes for most organizations has to be Accounting processes. Accounting tasks are arduous and if not done rightly, can spell financial doom for any business. This is why businesses need accounting automation tools like Netsuite Financial Management to navigate the intricacies of financial processes.
Built for large organizations in mind, NFM helps automate complex financial processes such as budgeting and forecasting, bank reconciliation, asset management, revenue management, compliance management, payables and receivables and so much more.
The software solves the challenges that come with manual processing, data accessibility, accuracy, and compliance with features like Revenue Recognition, Planning and Budgeting, Accounting, Billing, Financial Reporting, Financial Consolidation and Governance, Risk, and Compliance.
Pricing for NFM is flexible and based on the number of users per company.
SolveXia
As seen with the previous tool above, the most important business process automation is arguably the one that involves financial processes. Most hardly cater to the needs of small businesses but a few, and one of those few is SolveXia.
As the name suggests, SolveXia solves complex financial problems including revenue management, expense analysis, reconciliation, and much more using a powerful financial automation suite.
The automation software is suited for large and medium-scale businesses with more complex financial processes.
IFTTT
Here’s one automation platform social media small businesses can jump on. IFTTT, which is short for If This Then That, helps small businesses connect all their online assets.
Mostly it’s used for personal use but it has some amazing workflows for small businesses. For example, automatically add all email attachments to Google Drive or other tasks like that.
IFTTT can be used to automate various aspects like social media, email marketing, blogging content, and more. It offers a standard package for free forever.
Last Words
Fictional narratives aside, automation is not a sort of glitch in the Matrix or a robot from the future, it is a big deal for businesses looking to improve their revenue base and speed up work processes. It isn’t also meant to replace workers but to compliment them, freeing them up to do the work that matters for the organization.
