Automation is everywhere nowadays. Checkout lines, food ordering, marketing, and mass production all rely on automation and artificial intelligence (AI) in various ways. This is no coincidence either. Automation helps to save money and increase profits all while making customer service and experience optimized.
When it comes to the production, development, and streamlining of services in every industry, leaders and their teams must be willing to redefine their strategies and analyze their data through automation likewise. In the end, the companies that embrace automation will become the only ones that survive and are capable of competing with the rest. To show exactly how automation can help your brand expand and increase your consumer base, let’s first take a closer look at the problems automation aims to solve and how it has succeeded thus far below.
The Problem is Prolific
There are many problems that plague businesses—especially smaller ones—across the country which are practically begging to be solved. Some of the most concerning and costly problems companies experience in every industry are:
- Cutting costs
- Increasing engagement and sales
- Ensuring employee and customer retention
- Developing reliable supplier connections
- Streamlining sales and production
- Compiling company data
- Using company data for improvement
- Outperforming the competition
- Setting your brand apart
- Connecting with the community and modern consumer base
When analyzing the standard small business and its practices, you’ll quickly discover that these problems are holding them back in numerous ways which can easily be resolved through automation. Starting with its supply chain, many small companies rely on overseas suppliers that are not consistent or communicative whatsoever. As a result, their supplies tend to be unreliable and subpar which affects sales and brand image tremendously.
Similarly, many small companies have a disjointed relationship with their consumers and audience as well. In fact, 93% of small businesses struggle with common social media challenges. However, much of this disconnect stems from an inability to use consistent data to create optimized buyer personas and market to them accordingly.
Even being capable of connecting with the community and standing apart from the competition all comes down to a lack of consistency, streamlining, profitability, and data analysis. In turn, all of these problems lead to a faltering customer and employee base unable to handle the bottlenecks and inconsistencies any longer.
With these problems ‘infecting’ companies nationwide and spreading over time, it’s no surprise that these small businesses succumb to their own struggles more often than not. With 65.5% of businesses failing within the first 10 years, it’s also no surprise that more businesses are transitioning to data, supply chain, and sales automation as well.
After all, with the right automation on your side, you can transform these problems into opportunities and measure your data in ways that steer you and your team clear of failure indefinitely. To see what effective automation truly looks like in the average business, let’s see how embracing automation has helped other leaders find heightened success since the start of the pandemic.
Embracing Automation and Streamlining Sales
HSBC, the banking and financial organization, utilizes intelligent automation to increase workplace performance, improve shareholder returns, and enhance customer service.
This automation covers the mundane aspects of their company that directly affect their image and profitability such as sales forecasting, end-to-end project management, and goal measuring. All of this automation helped streamline the work of their team which led to increased employee retention and satisfaction. Similarly, their faster sales processes also helped increase their customer retention and satisfaction levels likewise.
Similarly, Chinese retail giant Alibaba relies on automation to help with shipping, logistics, predictions, and descriptions. They also use their data analytics to predict sales patterns, what new products to add to their site, what products to recommend to returning customers, and what marketing strategies work best for their customer base.
These automated services have helped the Chinese company to become one of the largest online retailers in the world with consistent growth and satisfaction from its users.
These are far from the only major brands using this technology to their benefit as well. In fact, Uber, Deloitte, AMN Healthcare, Harmonic Machine, and Redington Gulf all utilize automation in various ways to stand out and stay consistent without upsetting their employees or customers in the process.
For leaders in every industry, supply chain automation is one of the most successful methods for increasing profits and improving brand image. As a supply chain can truly make or break a company in the blink of an eye, being able to manage it effectively and intelligently is crucial to success in the first 10 years and beyond.
Even now at Stimulus, with the Stimulus Relationship Intelligence Platform (SRIP), companies can measure their data, connect with the best suppliers in their community, and streamline their entire sales and delivery process. This automation platform combines data insights, relationship-building tools, and a proprietary score to help companies make the best purchasing decisions while optimizing and growing their supplier network.
SRIP leverages data from internal and external sources to increase visibility, enhance decision-making, and to promote communication of supplier utilization. This allows teams to avoid risks and lower costs by identifying opportunities and disruptions across the supply chain in real time.
With this one development in business management and automation alone, companies can counteract their problems and optimize their internal and external image. However, automation has no plans of stopping there, and it’s small companies that are bound to come out on top by simply embracing the future with open arms.
The Future is Fully Automatic
As we speak, automation is moving past our wildest dreams and becoming capable of doing everything from product invention and development to sales, marketing, writing, coding, analyzing, and so much more.
As HubSpot stated on the subject, “In the future of automation, more companies will have a Head of Business Systems role to oversee their huge number of tools — and this position will hold a vast capacity for impact and change. More than ever, the SaaS tools we choose will help our businesses become more productive, profitable, and impactful.”
With this in mind, it’s time that companies embrace automation rather than ignoring its many positive characteristics in order to get ahead of the game while there’s still time. With Meta automation and the democratization of powerful AI technology, the possibilities for even more success and growth are endless. All it takes is one leap towards complete data and sales independence to see the results for yourself.
