News headlines about recession and economic downturns show up daily, making many veteran business owners tense.
According to Invisible Technologies, 8 in 10 surveyed said they anticipate the economy will enter a recession in the next 12 months. Your business will be no exception.
There are many ways to prepare for the upcoming recession, from downsizing to protecting yourself with various insurance coverages.
However, automation allows small businesses to remain competitive against their mega-brands competitors.
Here’s how automation can give you the edge you need and how you can protect your business from the risks automation present...
The Truth About The Upcoming Recession
Many are wondering how the upcoming economic downturn will affect their business. No one knows precisely how this will end and who will be hit the hardest. One thing is for sure; there will be winners and losers.
Is your company prepared for this very plausible scenario? To succeed, some businesses try to stay ahead of the curve, looking to protect themselves and organize their business.
Some prepare their finances through liability insurance, while others maximize their business capabilities to improve their market competitiveness.
You must invest in areas that others don’t and ensure the systems and processes you’ve put in place are efficient, cost-effective, and easy to manage during difficult times.
Automating processes and workflows will help you do just that.
Why You Should Automate Your Business
It’s no secret how automation has revolutionized the manufacturing industry. Automation allows you to allocate time on manual tasks to other areas of your business. You’ll have more time to dedicate to the ongoing health of your business.
Why should you decide to automate?
For starters, many businesses have processes that take time and consume many human resources. Automation simplifies how you do business by eliminating potential human factors, giving your employees more time to do more productive tasks.
Other companies are trying to utilize automation too. According to the same survey by Invisible Technologies, 64% of small businesses plan to automate more processes in the future, with 48% intending to do so by the end of the year to stay competitive.
Automation gives you control over your business and allows you to decrease expenses without decreasing revenues. It also allows you to avoid hiring more staff, and through automated rules and processes, you can enhance your organization's service while reducing overhead costs.
Automated tasks will reduce your expenses to focus on increasing your revenue. This can be especially helpful if you're a small business and need to cut back on unnecessary spending.
READ NEXT: How To Recession Proof Your Business (With Insurance)
How Automation Can Help You During An Economic Downturn
When the economy is bad, businesses tend to lose customers and employees.
Many small business owners can’t afford to lose existing customers or not have enough of the right personnel. On the other hand, large companies like Amazon, Apple, and Disney can afford to make drastic cuts. They retain customers by improving their customer service, not lowering their prices.
Understanding what your customers' value is essential to surviving the downturn.
Having the right information helps you prepare your business plan and strategy. Customers need reliability, consistency, and transparency now more than ever. To stay in the game, you must behave the same way as your competitors - and deliver.
To avoid losing customers to the competition, automate your workflow and order processing. Offering an instant online ordering-and-payment process can help you keep your customer.
In addition, automating your marketing and sales activities will help you increase sales. Sending promotional and marketing strategies are crucial, as is collecting leads that might be interested in your products or services.
Using an automated marketing tool, you can easily send email campaigns and newsletters and apply dynamic content to your messages. The effectiveness of these strategies is reflected in the growth of your email subscriber base.
READ NEXT: 7 Ways Employers Can Prepare For A Record-High Inflation
Optimizing Operations Through Automation
In addition to reducing costs, implementing and using automated workflows and standard operational procedures improves employee morale and retention. Your workers will spend less time searching for the information they need to do their jobs and more time focusing on the task at hand.
Instead of trying to hire and train additional staff and seeing your best people leave, you can save money by improving efficiency with intelligent software solutions.
Automation simplifies work, which gives you more time to do jobs that will enhance your return on investment (ROI).
Automation cuts down on tedious, repetitive tasks squandering your employees’ potential. For example, managing inventory is easier by using automation software to keep track of the amount of merchandise, ordering supplies, and speaking with suppliers to reorder stock.
Automating this data saves you significant time, allowing you to reinvest these resources into areas that matter, such as product development and customer relationships.
Automation Improves Hiring Employee Hiring And Retention
In a down economy, employee turnover is an imminent possibility.
Fortunately, with the help of smart software and better technology, you can work on your recruitment strategies and increase your retention rate by simplifying traditional HR management.
Talented professionals often demand workplace flexibility and autonomy to attract and keep them engaged. By providing clear expectations and enabling your staff to work independently, you’re making sure that they get what they need - and that you can stay focused on the more critical aspects of your company.
If you invest in flexible, user-friendly automation systems, you can allow remote work and far less paperwork.
By adopting this strategy, you spend less time and money on unproductive practices. You reduce turnover and increase productivity while maximizing performance.
Automation can also help standardize how your business screens its future employees, removing several manual activities associated with HR work. You can cut down on resume and profile sorting and even scheduling.
Scheduling can be a challenge for small businesses, especially in rural areas. Employees often commute from small towns to distant cities, making scheduling challenging. This can also take away time and resources better spent elsewhere.
Automation allows easier block timing that considers employee convenience with the company’s needs.
READ NEXT: How To Protect Your Business Against Employee Lawsuits
Automation Maximizes Customer Experiences
A successful business requires more than a speedy checkout and streamlined payment services. Customer demands are constantly changing, and you must keep up with these immediate and future needs by building up resources and data about them.
It’s essential to provide excellent customer service, and while building your brand, you want to ensure that your client receives the best care.
The customer experience is the most crucial company when you get down to it. It's more important than ever before. This will attract new customers and retain your existing ones. You can exceed customer expectations with tech trends such as chatbots for customer service and AI-driven marketing.
Investing in automation and changing how your company operates will give you a larger budget, resources, and extra time to enhance or develop your more customer-centric approach.
Software solutions also allow you to identify high-value targets, get the most out of your marketing and prospecting efforts, and optimize your sales funnel. These options help you maintain a consistent relationship with clients, and with the right solution, you can leverage data to understand their needs.
READ NEXT: Why Cyber Insurance Rates Are Rising At Record Rates
Automation Improves Your Products And Services
Small businesses primarily rely on word-of-mouth and recommendations to grow. Your profitability depends on your ability to nurture these relationships.
An effective way to make them happy is by addressing their issues and offering them solutions to their problems. With automation, you can drastically improve how you handle these interactions, enhancing your reputation and bringing in more business.
By taking advantage of these opportunities, you can improve your products and services by quickly responding to customer feedback and using the feedback to boost your offerings and make them even more valuable.
Investing in a streamlined, intuitive platform can simplify how you generate leads and input prospective customers’ contact information.
Advanced lead management solutions will provide you with more real-time data, improving your ability to create and source long-lasting, quality relationships with your target market.
Automation Can Keep You Competitive; Insurance Will Protect Your Business
The volatility of the marketplace and the unpredictability of consumer behavior are very real issues. Investing in and streamlining your operations can strengthen your resilience against such uncertainty.
Not all small businesses can survive a down market, and those often take full advantage of the latest technologies, strategies, and resources.
Automation can help you stay afloat in an economically down period, which can help you outlast the competition.
As you're automating your business, there are insurance coverages that can help protect your business through and after the automation process, including:
- Employment Practices Liability Insurance,
- Cyber Insurance, and
- Business Interruption.
These are just a few insurance coverages that will provide protection and sustainability through the automation process.
At Rogue Risk, we believe a solid commercial insurance program provides the sustainability needed for businesses to take the necessary risks for profitable growth.
If this is the relationship you want with your insurance broker, we would love to talk to you.
- You can call or text us at 518.960.6600
- Click here to contact us via email.
I look forward to introducing you to a new way of viewing your insurance program.
Thank you,
Ryan Hanley
Credits:
- Article by Sophia Young
- Photo by Luca Bravo
