Owning a small business is challenging; between the government regulations, your competitors, and dealing with externals like the economy, it’s a wonder anyone manages to survive the experience. One way to help your business is to take advantage of the technology available today and automate as much of your company‘s processes as you can. Here are five suggestions for automation to get you started:
Punching the Clock
Since the first employer hired the first employee, tracking hours worked has been a major headache. Done by hand until the advent of the first punch clock, it was easy to fudge hours worked. The punch clock eliminated the worst of the games, but not all; friends would clock in someone running late, to keep them from losing pay, and conversely, clock them out if they had to leave early. Punch clocks also did nothing to eliminate the drudgery of pulling cards, totalling hours, figuring out rates of pay to apply, and getting it all into the payroll department. Automating the time clock erases these problems; the time clock is programmed with all of the information needed to calculate total hours, shift differentials, pay rates, and overtime. This information is sent to payroll automatically for processing.
Automated time clocks work off of badges containing ID chips, which are scanned when the employee arrives to start work, and are scanned again when they leave. Badges are also scanned anytime the employee leaves the work area – for work breaks, or approved absences like doctor visits.
There are also software-driven time clocks, which work by having the employee log in or log out of an application, instead of physically scanning a badge.
Paying the Bills
Accounts payable is a major endeavor, regardless of your business’s size; tracking purchases and invoices from vendors is a full-time job and then some. Automating the process is both a time and money saver for your company.
It’s no small task to convert from a manual AP office to automating the process; you have to examine all of the steps involved, identify exception processes, and get buy-in from your vendors. To totally automate AP, vendors have to submit invoices electronically, and this requires changes in their processes as well. As automating AP usually results in faster payment, vendors are usually eager to hop on board. However, there will always be exceptions, and you will have to incorporate them into the workflow.
Billing the Customer
Accounts receivable is, traditionally, an overhead expense. Automating your invoicing turns this expense into an asset.
The benefits to automating your invoices are numerous: you get invoices out faster, resulting in faster payment; by converting your invoices from paper to electronic, you get a database of information you can mine easily; disputes are resolved faster when turnaround time for invoices is reduced from weeks down to a day or two. There are others, but you get the drift.
Mining data from your customer invoices drives product development “ you can determine which products are selling well and which ones are not; this results in decisions to stock a product or drop it from your offerings. By determining product desirability, you can then decide what future products you should consider selling.
Paying the Staff
Payroll is one of the biggest headaches and expenses any business, small or large, has to deal with on an ongoing basis. Many businesses find producing payroll in-house to be too much sugar for the dime, as the saying goes, and they outsource it to third-party processors, such as ADP. However, you have to have the data to give your third-party processor, and you have to give it in a timely manner, or your staff will not be paid, and nothing sparks rebellion like not getting your paycheck on time.
Automating your time-keeping processes is the first step to automating payroll. The data from the time clocks are processed into a payroll file, either for your in-house application or that third-party processor. You have to add information from each employee’s personnel file into the data, such as pay rate, pay classification such as hourly or salaried, and tax rates. Once completed, this file is provided as input for the payroll program or the payroll processor.
Payroll is obviously one of the most common and important tasks, both to employees and business owners. Go with a trusted provider – if you mess this up, you’re definitely going to be the least favorite guy at the office for a while says Logan Block, Director of Content at Sleepopolis.
When the payroll file is processed, checks or direct deposit tapes are cut and sent out, and your staff is compensated on time.
Dealing with the Customer
Customer service is at one time the most important department to your business, and the most neglected. Many businesses treat customer service as an afterthought when it should be the first thing on everybody’s mind.
Ultimately, dealing with the customer needs to be considered of utmost importance. It is important for businesses to show that they truly care about their customer’s needs and not just their bottom line says Michael Dadashi, CEO of Infinite Recovery
Giving good customer service is a problem for most companies, and until they resolve it, they can have a high dissatisfaction rate among their customers. Automating customer service management is the first step to having healthy relationships with paying customers.
Managing customer service calls is a challenge, and managing the trouble tickets generated by the calls only adds to the difficulty. Customer management systems can reduce the efforts required of your customer service staff, by automating the tracking of the calls and the generation and tracking of the tickets.
Customer management systems utilize a customer database, containing information on your clients. They also produce a database of customer calls and tickets by customer. Tracking the tickets lets you analyze whether or not the customer is calling with valid complaints. If so, the tickets let you know where to change your processes to eliminate or at least reduce the issue. If not, you can use the information to make managerial decisions about the customer.
Final Thoughts
Today’s business world is fast-paced; keeping up with the demands of doing business in such an atmosphere is stressful, both to the business owner and the employees. Help everybody have an easier time doing their jobs by automating as much as possible, giving them the time to interact with your customers at a human level whenever possible.
