What comes to mind when someone mentions business automation? Chances are your thoughts drift to your leads and customers — how automation and small business CRM software can help you provide a consistent, personalized experience and move each contact through your sales pipeline.
This is a worthwhile pursuit, and it’s certainly true that this software can help you accomplish it, but what about you and your team? You deserve to benefit from CRM and business automation just as much as your audience does, and automating your task management process is a great place to begin.
Many small businesses neglect this area of automation because they believe there are bigger fish to fry. However, the truth is that task management automation can take a huge weight off you and your team and have ripple effects across your entire business.
Let’s dive into the specific benefits you can expect from automating your task management process and how exactly you can use business automation to get the job done.
Benefits for your team and beyond
Never forget again
Forgetting is a normal part of being a human, but that doesn’t mean it won’t have detrimental effects on your business. Has an important task ever slipped your mind, only for you to remember it a little too late?
Thank you messages, contracts, quotes and follow-ups are all important tasks that can be easily forgotten if you’re not careful. And forgetting these items entirely or sending them later than originally promised can reflect poorly on your brand, keeping you from securing sales and repeat business in the future.
The good news is that business automation never forgets, and this software can easily (and automatically) send any important communications right on time. That means you won’t have to deal with that nagging voice in your head asking if you’ve forgotten something each day because you’ll know automation has your back.
Save time
A common theme across all branches of business automation is that it’s a time-saver. And automating your task management is no exception. The amount of time you’ll save from no longer having repetitive task-tracking items filling your plate is one of the biggest benefits you can anticipate.
In fact, businesses that implemented Keap’s business automation software to take care of their repetitive tasks reported saving an average of 10 hours per week. And you won’t just be saving yourself time — you’ll also be giving hours back to your entire organization as each department will have fewer manual, administrative tasks to take care of.
Then, all you have to do is brainstorm what you’ll do with those extra hours you have on your hands. You could say yes to exciting opportunities you’ve never had the chance to chase, attend business growth events and webinars, dive into the strategy of your business or simply relax.
Gain greater clarity and collaboration
Task management automation provides a reliable source of truth for every person on your team. You’ll each know who is doing what, when items are due, what the next step is and more. This will lead to increased clarity and transparency because no one will be left in the dark to wonder what’s expected of them.
Plus, as a leader, you will have easy access to everything you need to know about the projects in progress at any given moment and how your employees play a part. You’ll even be able to gain insights into metrics and feedback, providing extra clarity on your workflows.
After clarity is gained, collaboration quickly follows. Clearly knowing task assignments and status updates will make cross-departmental communication easier, which can also snowball into other benefits, including greater efficiency, increased creativity and stronger connections between teams.
The effect on your audience
The internal benefits task management automation will have on your business make it a worthwhile investment. However, it's only natural for your leads and customers to take notice when business process optimization has become a priority and things are running more smoothly. By saving time and increasing clarity and collaboration, you will be able to:
- Focus on the bigger picture of your business
- Improve and optimize your workflows
- Be more intentional about how you communicate with your audience
These perks, along with many others, will directly impact your customer experience and cut down on stress for your team members. That’s a win-win in our book.
How to get started
You and your team are manually doing things every day that could easily be taken care of by business automation. However, it’s easy to miss out on key task automations because these items are so ingrained in your daily to-do list. That’s why we’ve gathered the top five task management automations you should implement if you’re longing to save time and improve your workflows.
1. Task assignments and notifications
As you know, when a new project hits the ground running, the first thing you need to do is break it down into manageable chunks and assign those chunks to their respective departments and team members.
This is a time-consuming process if done manually. But thankfully, you can utilize business automation to set up assignments and send notifications to stakeholders whenever a new project is created.
How does it work? You choose what triggers your task assignment process, such as a new sale or a form submission on your website. Then, whenever that trigger takes place, your software can get to work delegating related tasks and notifying everyone involved.
2. Deadline reminders
After tasks have been assigned, you need a way to make sure they stay on track and get completed by their respective deadlines. But trying to remember every project, task and team member your business is juggling can take up a ton of valuable time and brain space.
Instead of hiring an additional employee to handle all this, offload this to your business automation software. As you set up your software to assign tasks, you can also configure automated reminders based on the due dates of each individual piece of work. With these routine project reminders, you can expect fewer bottlenecks in your workflows, more timely fulfillment of projects and increased cross-departmental clarity.
3. Automated prioritization
When multiple projects are competing for your attention, chaos can quickly unfold if you don’t have a plan in place. Make sure your project management process is airtight by letting business automation prioritize tasks.
Imagine logging in every day and knowing exactly what needs to take the front seat. This is a key step in business process optimization, and automation can help you accomplish it. This automatic prioritization process will benefit everyone in your company, leading to greater efficiency and less time wasted trying to figure out where to focus your energy each day.
Pro tip
Analyze your current workflows, types of projects and team feedback to see how you should prioritize tasks. Popular options include prioritizing by deadline, urgency level or project type.
4. Progress tracking and project feedback
Business automation will keep track of every update to your various tasks, which means you won’t have to track down multiple people and toggle between different platforms to get an accurate understanding of each project’s progress.
Then, you can keep the ball rolling by having your automation platform automatically send a survey to team members whenever a project is marked as complete. The data you discover will alert you to areas of improvement so you can better optimize your workflows for future projects.
These are invaluable features for any business owner. They offer a bird’s eye view of how efficiently and effectively things are running across departments without you having to spend time in the weeds.
5. Recurring task reminders
It’s often the little things that make the most difference. When it comes to automating your task management, reminders are arguably the simplest and most impactful automation to begin with.
You might have your own reminder system for repetitive tasks on your plate — sticky notes, alarms, email reminders, notes on your hand — and they might be doing the trick for now. But a better alternative is to consolidate all reminders into one platform that can launch them automatically and monitor their fulfillment. That’s what business automation is able to accomplish for you and everyone on your team, so those repetitive, manual tasks never fall through the cracks.
Bonus: Integrations
Level up your task management plan even more by choosing an automation and small business CRM software that integrates with your other apps. This enables you to automate even more steps across your projects. For example, one option is to integrate your business automation platform with Instagram. This would allow your social team to set up task automations based on specific triggers within the Instagram app, such as DMs, mentions, new posts and comments.
Your next steps
These five task management automations and the benefits they can bring you and your team are something to get excited about. Who doesn’t want more time, increased productivity, and well-optimized workflows? The best part is that these are the low-hanging fruits of automation, and you can get started today on this process of business process optimization.
The best way to kick off your optimization journey and tackle task management is with a trusted automation software like Keap. Our software was created to set small business owners free from chaos and give them more time in their days by automating their sales, marketing, service and operations processes.
If greater growth and more free time are something you’re interested in and you want to learn more, check out our breakdown of business automation or watch a Keap demo today.
