JANUARY 2021
AUTOMATION IN BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY OR THREAT? Over half a million new businesses were incorporated in the UK last year, and less than half of those will survive more than five years. But their failure won’t be down to recessions or global pandemics – this figure is based on statistics recorded way before COVID-19 came along.
invoicing, paying suppliers and chasing late payments. Then, of course, you need systems and processes in place for delivering your product or service and ensuring customer satisfaction.
And the best way to ensure that your business operates The reason many of these successfully is to make sure businesses fail is because they you have the right team are missing one fundamental in place, whether you hire thing – a plan. employees or outsource to free-lancers or external Regardless of industry or companies. sector, a business is more likely to succeed with a plan. So your business plan must After all, if you understand the include strategies for sales, destination, it’s easier to work marketing, finance, systems out how to get there. and processes, and your team. The first part of your plan needs to include a strategy for sales. Sales is the core of any business – it doesn’t matter how great your product or service is if you can’t sell it. So you need to know who will buy your product or service and why they would buy it – what problem does it solve? Once you understand who your customers are and their motivations for buying, it’s much easier to put an effective marketing strategy in place – another part of your business plan.
And the good news is technology provides many opportunities that support and enhance all these areas. You can automate just about anything from marketing and sales to invoicing and order processing. You can even automate a factory production line.
In effect, you could automate your entire business. Paid advertising to attract new leads, automated sales funnels to turn them into paying customers, automatic invoicing and payment processing on sign up, and automatic order Your marketing and sales dispatch on payment. Plus, strategies must also align with you can automate surveys your financial strategy. You to get customer feedback need to have a handle on your and schedule marketing pipeline so you can control communications that your projected cash-flow. encourage repeat business. You also need to be on top of But if you want to automate Business Digest 27
your business successfully, you need effective systems and processes, to begin with. Because as advantageous as technology can be, it can just as easily damage your business if it isn’t implemented in the right way. Automating your marketing and sales, for example, will only work if you understand who your target audience is, what they want and how to communicate with them. There is no point spending thousands on Google ads if you haven’t established what your target audience would be searching for, or if they’re even searching at all. And if they aren’t responding to your ads, you’re just throwing money away. Another problem with automation is the lack of personalisation. Most people can spot an automated sales email or connection request a mile off. And while some people understand this is an attempt to make your business more
