Running a business is expensive. Rent, equipment, monthly overheads, marketing, retirement plans, even staff birthdays… the costs truly do add up. In a world where many are walking fine lines between profit and cost bases on a monthly base, it can be difficult to say yes to new costs, even those that stand to add monumentally to your business and actually, could increase your profit whilst lowering your overheads. It sounds crazy when you look at it from a long-term perspective, but the irony of automation for many small business owners is that they feel they can’t afford to invest into the development of it – when in reality, they can’t afford not to.
Automation is rarely free. On top of regular subscriptions to automated services, such as CRMs, it can also be expensive to develop and implement in the first place. These costs can put astute business owners off, as they mentally juggle an unknown outcome with a very real upfront investment. Implicated in these considerations are concerns like ‘what if my staff don’t get on board and the money is wasted? What if we invest in the wrong system for us? What if it doesn’t work?’. It’s no surprise that the consideration to invest in automation can, for some, feel like a big one.
Automation comes with costs – but they’re easy to justify and will continue to save time and money over the long run.CLICK TO TWEET
However, this doesn’t have to be the case. Considering automation in your business isn’t meant to feel scary. In fact, it’s meant to feel empowering – because it will be. The power that comes with automating workflows, reducing manual labour and freeing up your workforce to invest their time in the areas that truly only they can do well is priceless.
There’s a few easy and instantaneous ways to justify the cost of automation, so to help you along your journey towards a more productive and efficient business, we’ve broken some down below.
THE POTENTIAL TO REDUCE OVERHEADS
Take a look at your physical workplace, and calculate the cost of keeping the lights on every month – the tea and coffee stocked, the furniture in working order, the cleaning up to scratch, even the toilet paper and paper towels in the cupboard. Physical workplaces carry with them high overheads, but for many of us, the idea of a team working remotely and from spaces that don’t incur costs to the business owner is still a new frontier. Many of the things that stand in the way of remote work can be solved by automation. Worried about clear team communication? Automated communication channels. Concerned you’ll lose the ability to creatively collaborate? Automation has an app (well, many!) for those needs too. With strong, cohesive and established automated workflows in place, you may open up space for your employees to work remotely, which in turn, could have a significant impact on your overheads per month, leading to increased profitability and reduced costs.
THE REMOVAL OF REPETITIVE MANUAL TASKS
It can be terrifying to consider how much you’ve invested in the form of wages into areas of repetitive work that aren’t clearly linked to profit generation – or if they are, are linked in a limited way (such as the provision of customer service to a customer who spent $10 on your product, which may require the same amount of time and manual input as the provision of the same customer service to a customer who instead spent $1,000). Too often, our inboxes keep us bogged down and away from the ‘real work’ – the work that only you and your team can do to grow your business, increase profits and work with maximum productivity. By using automation to manage repetitive tasks on your team’s behalf, you gain back significant savings in the area of wages, and can instead refocus your employees’ time on areas that offer more growth opportunity for your business.
These are only some of the ways automation can lead to increased savings on a long-term basis. When you start to consider these elements in light of your own business, the need to introduce automation to your workflows becomes clear. If you’d like to understand how automation can offer significant cost savings and increased productivity to your team, book in your free automation review call for customized and specific analysis.