Best business automation tools to streamline your workflow 

Whether you’re the Founder of an innovative start-up business or the CEO of a long-standing, well-established company, we can almost guarantee you need more hours in your day…

When you implement automation tools into your business workflow, you can save a huge amount of time while also increasing efficiency and reducing human error. It’s a win-win. 

But it can also take precious time to figure out which systems are right for you, and get them set up. That’s why we’re sharing our favourite automation tools and what they’re great at, so you can quickly decide what’s appropriate for your business needs. 

And don’t worry, you don’t need to be techy to use these tools… 

Benefits of automating your business processes

As a team of virtual assistants working in a wide range of growing companies, we’ve seen a range of automation tools used which gives businesses a competitive edge. These benefits include:

• Consistency and reliability – automated systems perform tasks without the variability that comes with human workers, reducing the time spent correcting errors and increasing the quality. 

• Speed – machines and software can process tasks much faster than humans. Automation eliminates the downtime associated with people taking breaks and working shifts, leading to the continuous operation of your business.

• Efficiency – automation can handle repetitive tasks, allowing employees to focus on more complex, creative, or strategic work. This improves overall productivity and reduces the time spent on mundane activities.

• Scalability – it’s easy to scale up automated processes quickly to handle increased workloads without increased labour costs, which is perfect for businesses experiencing growth or spikes in seasonal demand.

• Data handling – automated systems can process and analyse large volumes of data much faster than humans, so you get more timely insights and reports.

• Better employee satisfaction – when you start automating mundane tasks, employees can engage in more meaningful and rewarding work.

There aren’t really any downsides to automating business tasks… especially if you combine it with AI tools such as ChatGPT to speed things up even further. 

Areas of your business to automate – and our recommended tools

All businesses are different, therefore the automation tools you need will be different too. But from our experience, there are some areas that we’ve seen to be the most effective and useful in reducing your day-to-day admin time. 

Here are examples of what you could automate and the tools we personally recommend:

1. Tools to automate repetitive and routine tasks

Firstly, repetitive and routine tasks such as data entry and data processing, invoice generation, and payroll activities all lend themselves nicely to automation. 

Think of anything you add on your to-do list daily, weekly, or even monthly… If you’re unsure what these could be, we recommend tracking your time and noting down which tasks you don’t need to be doing yourself. This awareness will help you realise that much of your day is taken up by things that don’t move the needle in your business. 

Zapier is a great tool for automating workflows by connecting apps and services, and it saves countless hours by ensuring your systems talk to one another. You connect the tool to your existing systems and set up ‘Zaps’. With the free account, you get 3 free Zaps, meaning you can have 3 different actions automatically running in the background. 

Here are some simple and effective Zaps: 

• Gmail to Google Sheets – connecting new contacts from your Gmail with a certain trigger to a Google Sheet database.
• New contact in CRM to ActiveCampaign – when a new customer is added to your database, automatically include them in your email marketing tool. 
• Calendar event and Slack notifications – set up a Zap that notifies your team when a new event has been scheduled which includes them. 
• New monday.com task from an email – use filters to create a new project management task in a tool such as monday.com when certain criteria is met on an email. 

2. Tools to automate customer service

Customer service is another area where automation excels. The type of customer service automation tool you choose will depend on the type of business you run. For example, if you run an e-commerce business, you are more likely to need regular customer support compared to a consulting business, as you will have common queries for delivery and return information. 

You might only need a basic customer relationship management (CRM) tool, but you might also find systems such as chatbots and automated response systems useful. Systems such as Zendesk are great for handling common customer enquiries and automating customer service solutions.

We use ActiveCampaign* as our CRM. It’s great for automating tasks such as:

• Customer follow-ups – sending emails and reminders to leads and customers. 
• Internal project management – notifying us of steps required for each client. 
• Managing pipelines – move leads through different stages of your sales pipeline based on their actions. 
• Creating tasks – based on specific actions, such as ensuring timely follow-ups.
• Event tracking and notifications – such as automated triggers and reminders for webinar registrations or after signing up for a free download.

3. Tools to automate your marketing

Automation makes your marketing easier and less time-consuming, especially for email communication and to stay on top of your social media marketing. As already mentioned, we use ActiveCampaign which is great for email marketing campaigns, issuing newsletters, and other regular communications.

For social media posting and management, you could use Smarterqueue*, Buffer or Hootsuite to automate your social media posts. Although you still need to create content, you can batch the scheduling part once a month instead of worrying about this daily. 

You might also want to use a quiz funnel platform such as ScoreApp which you can set up once and then it will continue to collect leads and data for you on an ongoing basis. 

For example, we have a ScoreApp quiz to help potential customers of Virtually Priceless identify what level of support they need in their business. It’s set up with our ActiveCampaign account to automatically send emails to people once they’ve taken the quiz, so we are building relationships with new leads without doing anything. 

Other ways you can automate your marketing include: 

• Email drip campaigns – such as nurture sequences and campaigns triggered by an action (such as an abandoned cart, taking a quiz, or booking a call). 
• Segmentation and personalised marketing – so you can send follow-ups based on your subscriber behaviour.
• Automated social media posts – create triggers to automatically share a new blog post when published on your website. 
• Automatically respond to comments – you can use tools to automate comment replies, which are especially useful if you want people to comment a certain word to gain access to a free download or event registration. 

4. Tools to automate sales and order processing

Whether you sell a product or provide a service, you need to keep your customers in the loop with their sales and order processing status. This keeps your back-end systems up to date and provides a better customer experience, leading to more sales. 

We recommend Salesforce as it has great automation capabilities, such as: 

• Tracking orders – and providing status updates to your team and customers. 
• Keep your CRM updated – so you have customer progress and communication all in one place. 
• Customer quotes and reports – automate the generation of quotes and comprehensive sales reports. 
• Payments – send payment reminders and automated invoices. 

5. Tools to automate recruitment

From being inundated with applications when you post a role to scheduling interviews, hiring new team members can be a time-consuming task. But by leveraging automation tools in your recruitment process, you will save huge amounts of time and energy – and provide a better candidate experience. 

We recommend a range of automation tools for recruitment, including: 

• Candidate screening and communication – filter through applicants and update them with their progress using platforms such as BeApplied.
• Scheduling interviews – Calendly is our go-to tool. It’s great for both parties, as it allows candidates to select pre-selected slots that suit you, and sends automated confirmations and reminders. 
• Employee onboarding tools – consider Personio, Breathe or BambooHR which help create a seamless experience for your new recruits. 

Automate your business to save time and reduce stress

This is just a snapshot of the tasks you could automate but there are hundreds of other possibilities, such as automating parts of your financial admin. No matter the specific tools you use, using automation leads to significant time savings and increased efficiency in your business. 

We love helping clients set up automations and dramatically reducing the time they need to spend on these repetitive tasks. 

If you’re unsure which tool is the right one for your needs, or you would like any guidance on implementing particular tools for your business, please feel free to get in touch. We offer a free 30-minute consultation to discuss your needs and how we can help. 

*Please note, some of these are affiliate links, meaning if you click and make a purchase, we may receive a small reward. We only ever recommend tools that we use in our business, or have personally tried and tested.