Top 8 Automated Tools for SMEs

Automation is a powerful tool that can make processes more efficient and less expensive. You may think that automation tools are only accessible by large companies with significant resources. There are some cases when outsourcing complex tasks to professional consultants is the best options, such as website migration by cms2cms.com. However, other tasks can easily and effectively be achieved in-house with the help of automated tools.

These tools can help them to be more efficient, boost performance, and make their businesses more successful. Here are 8 top automated tools that are great for SMEs.

1. PurchaseControl

PurchaseControl is a highly useful automated procurement and purchase order tool. Purchasing is a very important but often very time consuming area for SME’s. It allows you to create an automation workflow for the entire purchase order process, including automated purchase requests. This can be a significant time saver for businesses, as well as avoiding costly manual mistakes.

This tool is also great for creating departmental budgets and spending limits, helping you to more efficiently plan and track this area. The tool also has various functions that help you to identify potential savings. You can also manage purchasing for multiple branches of the businesses through the central tool, even across different countries.

2. Buffer

Most SMEs today know that social media is critically important to their digital marketing efforts. However, writing and posting social media posts manually, especially across multiple platforms, can be extremely time consuming. It can also make it difficult for resource-poor small businesses to be consistent with their social media posts, and therefore make digital marketing efforts less effective.

Buffer is an automated tool that allows businesses to schedule their social media posts across multiple social platforms. This greatly streamlines the process, meaning that posts go out on the right day and at the right time for most impact. This tool also allows you to analyse post performance to help you optimize your strategy.

3. Leadformly

Capturing more leads is essential to any businesses success. Leadformly helps you to capture and convert more sales leads, meaning more sales, more profits and a larger customer base. This tool is an effective form-builder that helps you to automate your lead capturing process, as well as making it more effective.

Leadformly uses logic to ask visitors personalized questions based on the information they enter in the form. This makes the information gathering process much more useful for businesses, and allows SMEs to focus on prospects who are more likely to buy. According to Leadformly, this could result in a 300% increase on your marketing ROI.

4. ActiveCampaign

An all-in-one marketing automation tool, ActiveCampaign offers email and marketing, sales and CRM functions for businesses. In particular, it lets SMEs automate their sales processes and send personalized customer interactions.

For example, with ActiveCampaign, you can choose to send personalised emails to customers and prospects in response to certain actions. This is a great way to send more personal, effective communications without having to take a very time-heavy approach to nurturing leads. This tool is also very affordable, with a low monthly subscription fee, and no additional costs to surprise you such as set up fees.

5. Asana

Asana is a project management tool that allows managers to track task completion, as well as supporting effective communication within teams. It helps individuals and teams to improve their productivity, as well as ensuring that deadlines are met. Asana has a visual layout which helps managers and team members to quickly and easily see all components of a project and how they are progressing.

A great advantage of Asana is it allows for integration with around 100 business applications such as Outlook, Google Calendar, CSV Importer, Zappier and Dossier. This is great for automating project management, appointment setting, and more, to make workflows more efficient.

6. Deluxe Payroll

Payroll is another key area for SME’s, and one that can take a lot of time and energy to manage manually. It is a particular headache for SME’s that are big enough to need a payroll system, but not large enough to have a dedicated employee to take care of this area. Deluxe Payroll connects you with a dedicated payroll specialist in order to develop an automated payroll management process. Another benefit of this tool is it helps to make sure you are compliant with relevant government regulations.

Along with payroll, Deluxe Payroll also offers HR and compliance solutions, helping SMEs to better handle their human resources and payroll purposes. It automatically stores and distributes employees’ payroll information through a central system that employees can then access to check their payroll details. All of this saves business owners and managers a significant amount of time, not to mention headaches over trying to organize payroll and related tasks.

7. Calendly

Time management and keeping track of appointments is one of the biggest struggles in business. Failing to properly manage your calendar can lead to missed meetings or double booking your time, which can be devastating to client relationships, among other issues. How many times have you confirmed a meeting over the phone or by email, only to forget to put it in your calendar? This can not only be embarrassing, it could cost you clients or even your reputation.

Calendly is an automated calendar tool that helps staff members to manage their schedule. It uses automation to schedule meetings and appointments efficiently and effectively. Calendly streamlines the process of setting up a process by automatically setting your availability in the calendar, and inviting your contact to select the best time for you. This saves greatly on emails going back and forth to set up meetings, and ensures that everyone is on the same page.

8. Quantify Ninja

For sellers on Amazon, SEO is one area when you may want to consider working with a consultant like Amazonseoconsultant.com. Ranking your products on Amazon is undoubtedly the best thing you can do to drive visitors to your listings and therefore boost sales. This is not only an important byt also very complex area, and so an expert consultant will be able to advise you on the best and latest approaches. However, even when working with a professional, it is important for you to be able to carry out certain processes yourself in order to drive sales of your products.

Quantify Ninja is a multi-functional tool that helps Amazon sellers to “push people down the conversion tunnel”. Their set of tools help sellers to optimize every step of the process, from appearing in more search results to securing sales, repeat business, and endorsements. This includes allowing sellers to automate certain processes, such as following up with their customers. Being able to automate customer follow up allows Amazon-based businesses to secure vital repeat business without needing to dedicate the large number of hours required to do this manually.

Final Thoughts

Automation represents great potential for businesses of all sizes. Automation can help businesses to be more efficient, greatly saving on the time and resources they need to spend. At the same time, automation can improve processes, delivering a higher level of performance.
For small to medium businesses, there are a range of automated tools available that can help companies to be more efficient and more effective in their critical processes. These include tools that offer automation for pay roll, marketing, calendar management, project management, and more, and all have significant advantages for the businesses that use them.

About the Author

Sophie Karcher is a professional blogger and writer who specializes in modern design and all things web development. She is passionate about traveling and exploring new places.