Five Automation Technologies Your Company Needs in 2020

Automation is no longer the future: it’s the present. And it’s no longer about robotic arms working on car production lines – it’s smart, AI-enabled computer programs that can learn from their own mistakes and adapt to the pressures of different jobs in extra-quick time.

This kind of technology is now available on the business market – in software packages and on the cloud – to help firms make the most of advanced digital technology. This article guides you through four of these technologies and their use cases to introduce you to the tech you need the most in 2020.

Customer Service

Tired of maintaining a call center? Bored with answering endless email queries that are answered in your FAQ section? It’s time to continue providing your customers with a great experience, but to replace the person they’re talking to with an automated system – saving your staff the pain of getting back in touch with every single customer who has a query or complaint. Simply install an automated chatbot onto your website, and code them to offer prompts that will guide your customers to the right solution each time they engage with your customer services team.

Payroll and HR

Your HR department is too big. That’s the conclusion you’ll reach when you come across advanced automation software that helps with every single element of an HR team’s working day. Zenefits is an HR company with a difference: they produce end-to-end automation software to help centralize your employees’ experience, automate payroll and onboarding, and get your employees quickly dealt with through all elements of their HR engagement. This is a technology that delivers to all of your staff through your HR department – and is an absolute must for firms across the world.

Logistics

Does your firm deliver? Do you need materials supplied regularly to your door? These questions are all questions of logistics, and some companies maintain huge teams that plan and organize these deliveries in such a way as to optimize the number of drivers and trucks you’re using at a given time. This team does amazing work – but they’re also doing the work of a single software solution, developed to help logistics departments keep a better track of their fleets. This automation software learns about your patterns of deliveries on the job, which means that its planning will soon exceed that of your human workers in the logistics team.

Marketing

Marketing cannot be fully automated: you’re always going to need creative individuals to help you build up your brand and show off your various products and services. And yet, the more you consider that marketing is a digital enterprise in the modern era, the more you come to realize that the vast majority of marketing can be automated – and, indeed, software packages already provide this service. From email marketing with MailChimp to social media marketing with automated software targeting specific users, this is another area in which to make the most of new technologies, saving your staff time and energy.

Invoicing

Automated invoicing software has helped change the way companies make payments and receive payments forever. Before automation, the traditional invoicing software had to be monitored and operated manually. That alone took a lot of time and made room for humans to make mistakes.

With invoicing being automated it’s possible to make an 80% cost reduction in your payment process. Not only that but by using paperless accounts payable you’ll speed up your payments, which usually means that you’ll receive a small discount from vendors.

There you have it: five areas of your firm that you should automate before the year is over.