The biggest businesses operate with speed and efficiency, and it’s not because they have armies of workers toiling away at manual processes like updating sales ledgers and writing shipping labels. Their secret? Lean operations. They replace manual tasks with business process automation tools.
Thanks to dramatic advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and robotic process automation, computers can handle many business processes, from onboarding new employees to customer relationship management.
If you’re a small business with a limited budget and lean team, every minute you get back through automation is a minute you can spend growing your business. It’s no surprise that 88% of businesses now use some form of AI.
In this guide, learn what types of business automation might be right for you, with tips on how to automate repetitive tasks in your company.
What is business automation?
Business automation is the process of automating routine manual business operations with computer and robotic systems. It replaces manual tasks like data entry and billing with digital workflows that run automatically based on rules you set.
Once routine work is automated, employees can shift their time toward higher-value responsibilities. Software robots can perform many repetitive tasks, freeing workers to focus on things like strategy or client relations.
If you run a small business, business automation tools can help you operate with a leaner staff or reallocate employees to new initiatives—especially those that require a human touch to succeed.
Benefits of business automation
- Increased efficiency
- Cost savings
- Improved accuracy
- Enhanced decision-making
- Improved customer experience
- Improved employee satisfaction
- Scalability
Here are ways automated processes can lead to better business outcomes—even if you’re a small business owner with limited resources:
Increased business efficiency
Workflow automation completes tasks in the correct order while meeting deadlines. Since many ecommerce automation tools require minimal human intervention, they let workers focus on more important tasks and complex processes.
For instance, a retailer could automatically route incoming orders to the right location based on inventory levels, saving hours of manual sorting each week.
There’s plenty of opportunity to automate repetitive tasks, especially if you’re running an online business. McKinsey estimates that roughly one hour of daily activities have the technical potential to be automated. This could rise to three hours per day by 2030.
Cost savings
When you turn your small business process management over to software and machines, you can save money without sacrificing operational excellence.
Studies show retailers that invested heavily in automation were able to reduce costs by 22%. For example, you can operate with a leaner team, which cuts down on payroll expenses.
📚Learn: Automation vs. AI: What’s the difference?
Improved accuracy
An automation tool often reduces data errors that can happen when humans perform repetitive tasks.
Small business automation software, for example, can help you comply with regulations and maintain compliance and audit trails, all while avoiding mistakes that may be expensive to correct.
Fashion brand Rebecca Minkoff also uses radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to track inventory automatically. When products arrive in store, associates scan the tags to update quantities in their inventory management system. This approach has 99% accuracy compared to manual methods.
Enhanced decision-making
If you study your existing processes, you can flag inefficiencies and improve your workflows.
Automation tools can assist with this through process mining, which is when tools extract valuable data about your core processes, such as how many times you communicate with a customer over the course of a sale.
This data can guide your decision-making. Perhaps you’ll automate the sales process to allow more self-service options. Or maybe you’ll leave your existing process untouched because sales keep improving. No matter what you decide, data from various automation tools can help you lead with confidence.
💡Tip: Shopify Sidekick is a built-in AI assistant to help run your business. Ask it to create discounts, retrieve sales reports, and get personalized advice on how to grow your ecommerce business within your Shopify admin.
Improved customer experience
Maintain steady communication with your buyers through customer experience automation. You can automate repetitive tasks within a customer relationship management (CRM) system, such as sending automated messages to shoppers or updating customer information like address or past purchases.
Business automation can also boost customer satisfaction by tailoring sales and marketing efforts to individuals. By leveraging marketing automation tools, you can deliver personalized offers to customers—65% of whom view these as a top reason to make a purchase.
Improved employee satisfaction
Business automation can streamline employee onboarding processes, making it easier for new employees to get up to speed.
Automation can also help existing employees. For instance, an internal communications system can send automated messages to relevant employees while leaving out people who don’t need to receive them. This keeps stakeholders in the loop while showing other team members that you value their time and won’t waste it with irrelevant emails.
Concerned about automation taking away jobs? PwC’s recent report found AI can make people more valuable, not less. It reported three times higher growth in revenue per worker in industries with greater exposure to AI.
Scalability
Automation can help businesses scale their operations more easily. When machines handle workflow management, it becomes easier to take on more clients, open new locations, and expand services. It’s why 80% of businesses say their companies set efficiency as an objective of their AI initiatives.
5 types of business automation
- Basic automation
- Workflow automation
- Intelligent automation
- Business process management automation
- Process mining
Business automation describes several types of transitions from human work to automated, machine-based work. You may find that one of these automations suits your needs, while others are less relevant to your work. Here are the five main types of business automation:
1. Basic automation
Basic automation involves automating simple rules-based tasks, such as data entry, pre-planned emails, and appointment scheduling. Basic automation doesn’t require advanced AI software or significant human intervention.
2. Workflow automation
Workflow automation concerns the flow of work between different departments or individuals within an organization.
For instance, you could use workflow automation to expedite the approval process for purchase orders, streamline the onboarding process for new employees, or generate a client distribution list.
Take this a step further with workflow orchestration, which coordinates multiple systems and complex processes. Here’s what that might look like in the case of customer support workflow automation:
- Incoming tickets are routed to a customer support software.
- The system pulls information from the customer’s unified profile, including order history.
- AI decides which team member is best suited to handle the request and routes the ticket toward that agent.
💡Tip: Shopify Flow gives you the freedom to create your own workflow automations. Define a trigger and outcome across both native Shopify features and integrated apps, or choose from prebuilt workflow templates to automate key processes within minutes.
3. Intelligent automation
Intelligent automation is a more advanced form of automation that uses AI and machine learning to automate complex tasks related to decision-making and problem-solving.
Business users can leverage the vast automation capabilities of intelligent AI to achieve better business outcomes. They can use AI to analyze data, process customer service requests, or oversee vendor management.
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a subset of intelligent automation that can handle simple tasks—provided you set clear rules. For instance, you could use RPA to:
- Process refunds and exchanges
- Create a chatbot that handles FAQs without input from your support team
- Pull data from purchase orders and input it into your supplier relationship management tool
4. Business process management automation
Business process management (BPM) automation involves automating entire business processes, from end to end.
For example, you could automate your entire supply chain process, from procurement to delivery, or your entire sales process, from lead generation to closing deals. This type of automation creates a dramatic digital transformation that could lead to different business models within your company.
5. Process mining
Process mining uses first-party data to discover and analyze business processes. It uses specialized algorithms to identify your workflow patterns, and flags opportunities to make the process more efficient.
We can see this in practice with an order fulfillment workflow: You might think you have a streamlined process. In reality, process mining shows orders get re-routed when products are sold but out of stock. You can then turn this insight into action to prevent fulfillment delays. For example, use a Shopify Flow workflow template that automatically hides products when the quantity dips below one.
How to get started with business automation
Implementing automation in your small business isn’t as simple as choosing a tool and giving it free reign. It takes a more coordinated approach—one that automates repetitive tasks accurately without impacting the customer experience.
Here’s a five-step guide on how to automate business processes with AI:
- Audit current processes. Take a look at where you and your staff are spending most of your time. Jot down the workflows and checklists you currently follow, whether that’s processing orders or handling support tickets.
- Identify repetitive tasks. For each step in the workflow, examine which repetitive tasks can be automated. Using the order processing example, that might be choosing a warehouse to fulfill from or researching shipping carrier rates.
- Select the appropriate automation type. From automated workflows to intelligent automation, choose the format that best suits the task. For example, if you want to automatically reorder inventory when stock runs low, basic automation can get the job done. But if you need to route orders across locations based on stock levels and delivery times, intelligent automation is a better fit.
- Implement incrementally. Start small to test the automation and flag inaccuracies before deploying it on a larger scale across your business.
- Measure results. Track how much time and money you’ve saved as a result of the business automation. Also consider accuracy rates and employee satisfaction to see the bigger picture impact of your new process.
5 examples of business automation
Here are five potential scenarios in which automated processes transform business operations:
1. Marketing campaigns
A marketing team can use AI tools to automate email campaigns, social media posts, and targeted advertisements.
The team sets specific business rules within the platform, such as sending welcome emails to new subscribers or promoting certain products based on customer behavior. This marketing automation not only saves time but also ensures marketing messages reach the right audience at the right time.
Email marketing automation tactics
Email marketing is one of the most valuable marketing channels as subscribers have explicitly opted in to hear from you. But it’s time consuming to manage if you’re not using email automation for tasks such as:
- List cleaning
- Tracking engagement
- Preventing spam
- Recouping abandoned carts
- Sending birthday emails
Cart abandonment emails, for example, display the exact products a customer had in their cart when they exited your website. They’re easily automated, highly personalized, and have the highest conversion rate of all email workflows.
💡Tip: Shopify’s unified data model merges data you’ve collected on each customer into a unified profile. Use this to segment your audience and automate personalized workflows with Shopify Messaging.
2. HR onboarding
An HR department can automate its employee onboarding process using a centralized HR management system to send welcome emails, schedule orientation sessions, and provide necessary training materials. This reduces manual work for HR staff and helps maintain a consistent onboarding experience.
3. Invoice processing
A finance department can turn to automation software to improve its invoice processing workflow. The system can automatically approve invoices under a certain amount, flag those that need managerial approval, and match invoices with purchase orders and delivery receipts. This automation minimizes errors and speeds up payment processing.
4. Customer support
A customer service team can implement an automated ticketing system to manage customer inquiries and support requests.
The AI-powered system prioritizes tickets based on urgency and customer status, assigns them to relevant support agents, and sends acknowledgment emails to customers. It can also pair with a chatbot that can answer simple, frequently asked questions without intervention from your human team.
By centralizing these tasks on a single platform, customer support workers can respond quicker to inquiries, improve customer satisfaction, and ensure they don’t overlook any ticket.
💡Tip: Shopify Magic pairs with Shopify Inbox to generate instant answers to FAQs. You deliver consistent advice to customers, while they get real-time answers to their queries without waiting for your team to respond.
5. Lead generation and sales automation
Some industries record an average customer acquisition cost of over $370. The time it takes to nurture leads influences the cost—as does the sheer volume of times you need to expose your brand to your target audience in order to close a sale.
Lead nurturing automation can address both of these issues. For example, you could automate sales processes like:
- Lead scoring to prioritize higher value deals or those more likely to close
- Automatic email sequences to follow up with customers who’ve expressed interest in a particular product
- Booking sales calls with prospective customers using automated appointment booking apps
Business automation FAQ
What can be automated in business?
You can automate many processes in business, including marketing campaigns, customer service, HR tasks, invoice processing, and data management, to enhance efficiency and reduce manual work.
What are the challenges of business automation?
The challenges of business automation include resistance to change, data quality issues, and the need for human intervention to ensure quality control.
How can AI be used to automate businesses?
AI can be used to automate business processes such as:
- Recouping abandoned carts with automated emails
- Replying to easily answered customer support tickets
- Segmenting customers for targeted marketing campaigns
- Personalizing product recommendations
- Updating inventory levels across sales channels
- Reconciling accounts in your bookkeeping system
- Analyzing sales trends to forecast demand
What processes should be automated first?
There is no “best” process to automate first—it depends on your current processes and priorities. A small business might start by automating customer support tickets, while a larger omnichannel brand might focus on automatically updating inventory quantities across sales channels.
How long does automation implementation take?
The time it takes to implement business automation depends on what you’re automating. Basic automation can be configured in a few days, while more advanced automation—such as intelligent automation for demand forecasting—takes longer as you prepare data and train AI models to complete the task.
