The goal of any business is to make money, and utilizing all of the resources available to you is the best way to do that. When looking for ways to boost profits, automating some of your processes is a great idea. Find out more about how you can take your business to the next level by implementing some automated processes.
In business, automation translates into the creation and application of technology to monitor and control the production and delivery of products and services. Using automation helps free up your team’s time — and your time — to streamline operations.
To stay competitive in the new year, here’s information about how to automate tasks so you can put your best foot forward and meet your business goals.
What does small business automation mean?
Automating a business means that technology is used to eliminate human intervention for business processes. When you automate, you are freeing yourself and your employees from performing repetitive and boring administrative tasks. Automation software is technology that works in the background to make the automation happen, kind of like your very own personal assistant. The right small business automation software may help a company get organized, increase sales, improve the customer experience, and save a tremendous amount of time. They can be a real game changer for small businesses.
How does business process automation work?
Automation may help remove repetitive tasks from your plate. Some of these tasks might be customer and vendor follow-ups, reporting, drafting emails, and posting content to social media. While these tasks aren’t difficult overall, the time commitment can distract you from pursuing goals that will impact your bottom line and move your business forward.
With marketing automation, you can “set it and forget it” once your manual processes are up and running. Automated tasks will run in the background while you focus your attention on business-building initiatives.
Why should a small business automate?
Automating is a great way to make your small businesses even more profitable. When you don’t have access to the tools that larger corporations have, you have to look for ways to streamline processes. Reducing errors, saving time, and saving money are all excellent benefits of automation.
Operating costs reduction
Manual data crunching often leads to mistakes, no matter how skilled the employee is, leading to increased costs and wasted time. Automated systems are highly accurate and can lead to lower operating costs, increasing your gross profit. You can’t have employees working 24/7, 365 days a year. Automated software helps you avoid the costs of extra staff or paying overtime to get routine work done.
Reducing time for routine tasks
Have you reviewed your daily schedule recently? Calculate the hours you spend on routine work. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, as much as 45% of the tasks employees are paid to perform could be automated. Another study shows that many employees spend up to 51% of their workdays doing “busywork,” or work that could be automated. Automating not only saves time but also allows employees to work on more meaningful or goal-focused tasks to support your business.
Improving productivity
Intelligent small business automation can streamline operations and help employees reach their goals. Map out processes that you can streamline to reduce inefficiencies and repetitive work.
Gaining clearer business insights
Data is king in business to help shape strategy and improve profits. Manually compiling reports and analyzing data can be extremely time-consuming. A study by Kanerika shows that 65% of organizations have already started automating their data analytics processes. The same study found that Companies using AI-powered analytics report making decisions up to 10 times faster while reducing their operational costs by 25-30%. Automation can crunch and organize a large volume of information without a lot of extra work.
Fostering healthier team collaboration
Automation helps businesses track progress and keep everyone in the loop, which simplifies team communication. Keeping everyone under one system and providing more insight into workflows ensures that employees are on the same page.
Increasing accountability and transparency
Keeping track of multiple workflows is a big challenge. Automated workflows can provide accountability for the end-to-end project process. Certain software can log who performed what step and when it was completed. This helps increase team accountability and overall business efficiency.
Reducing errors and redundancies
No matter how skilled a person is, errors do happen. A mistake could throw off data calculations, lead to a social media snafu, or derail an important project. Errors can decrease speed and accuracy and impact overall employee and business efficiency.
Small business automation should support an enhanced customer experience
Customer experience has become the center of all activities for all major brands. A positive experience is more powerful than price and quality itself. Major studies have also confirmed that customers tend to remain loyal or abandon the band for rival brands, with customer experience as the deciding factor.
By automating some customer service tasks, your company can create a customer experience that’s faster and more consistent. It also ensures that those customer service options are always available.
What is the difference between RPA and BPA?
RPA (robotic process automation) uses software bots to handle specific, repetitive tasks, while BPA (business process automation) aims to streamline entire workflows and connect multiple steps. Unlike RPA, BPA often utilizes human input. RPA offers a tactical, cost-effective way to manage high-volume, rule-driven work, while BPA provides a broader, more strategic solution for complex, end-to-end processes.
What tasks should small businesses automate?
If small business automation is your goal moving forward, consider software for these business tasks.
Schedule social media posts
Social media is among the most important business marketing tools today. Posting content regularly is a best practice to elevate a brand online. Posting to multiple social media platforms takes lots of time and effort. With automation, your social media workflow is simplified.
Streamline customer service
While there’s no replacement for a live customer service representative, there are automated tools that can largely automate some customer service actions. For example, AI-powered chatbots can provide basic support and answers online for your clients. Tasks like ticket generation, quote management, and account management can free your representatives up for more important work that requires human decision-making skills.
Simplify basic IT support tasks
IT support is a necessary part of business today. Workload automation solutions can simplify IT tasks like troubleshooting, resource monitoring, and job scheduling. Machine learning has made small business workload automation tools much more powerful over the past few years. Note that your business will still need human IT professionals to establish and maintain IT automated tools.
Automate email marketing with behavior triggers
Automating email marketing is a snap these days. Don’t spend time writing multiple emails, identifying audience segments, and pushing the send button. For example, the standard “welcome email” you receive whenever you create a new account or purchase a product on a website is a snap when you use small business automation.
Set up regular billing notifications
Automated billing helps charge customers for purchases without the manual task of generating and sending invoices. It’s well designed for regular, recurring payments and can also be used for one-time purchases. Billing automation reduces the chances that customers will be mistakenly billed for the wrong amount. Automation can help you get paid in a timely manner, making it easier to manage cash flow.
Use small business automation to help future-proof your organization
Small business process automation can help your company stay competitive and run more efficiently in the increasingly crowded online marketplace. In 2026, embracing small business automation means avoiding repetitive, time-consuming tasks to allow you to focus on more important projects to help grow your business.
Frequently asked questions about small business automation
1. Can business automation reduce the need for hiring more staff?
Yes, business automation can help reduce the need for hiring more staff. While your people are your most valuable resource, automating select tasks allows your existing team members to focus on more important tasks that require a human touch.
2. What are the best tasks to automate first in a small business?
The best tasks to automate first in your small business are those repetitive tasks, like invoicing, social media posting, email campaigns, and customer service queries. Automating these tasks lets your team focus on the more pressing tasks without dealing with unnecessary stress.
3. How much does business automation cost for a small business?
Small businesses that want to automate processes can spend anywhere from $30 per month to thousands of dollars. You’ll need to decide which tasks you want to automate, and how extensive you want your automated processes to be.
4. How do I know if automation will actually pay off (ROI)?
To determine if automation will pay off, you’ll need to first consider the initial and ongoing costs associated with it. Then, consider the tangible and intangible benefits it will provide. Things like labor savings, improved customer experience, and other factors can be hard to quantify, but having a general idea of how you’ll use automation can help.
5. What if I need automation tools or more staff, but we don’t have the budget right now?
Even if you don’t have a budget for automation tools or more staff, there are still steps that you can take. Consider using AI tools to handle repetitive tasks, which should allow you to better utilize the staff that you already have.
6. Can SBA loans be used to fund business automation or AI tools?
Yes, an SBA loan may be able to be used to fund business automation and AI tools. The SBA 7(a) loan is often used to invest in equipment, technology, and machinery. That includes things like software licenses, computer systems, and other IT and automation-related tools.
