Rinse and repeat – handling repetitive tasks kills workplace innovation. Every employee spends a significant portion of their time handling manual, time-consuming repetitive tasks such as data entry, invoice management, copying data from one source to another, document management, etc.
Monotonous work is a creativity killer. You will feel stuck doing those mundane tasks over and over. So how to handle these tasks efficiently and free up your time for productivity? Here is a list of dos and don’ts when it comes to handling repetitive tasks.
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What are Repetitive Tasks?
In any occupation, more than one-third of all responsibilities are repetitive which could be automated. But what are these tasks and why do they eat away your time? Well, the repetitive tasks can be actions of agenda, app transfers, managing data collection, and updates.
- Preparing agendas for meetings is a repetitive ritual that can take up your precious time and could compound into hours every week.
- Data is the lifeblood of any business but unfortunately collecting and managing them comes under repetitive tasks. Entering data into spreadsheets, saving files in specific folders, resetting passwords, sorting emails, answering customer questions, and creating performance reports all come under data management.
- Your company will be using apps no matter what type of industry it is. You will need to transfer information from one app to another.
- This is one of the highly recurring tasks – checking and rechecking to see if the action items have been proofed, approved, and updated. This can manifest long threads where you need to spend time scrolling through your project to find the latest version.
And the list goes on.
How Repetitive Tasks Can Impact Your Performance?
On average, a typical office worker spends 10% of their productive time on manual data entry into business applications such as CRM, EPP systems, and spreadsheets. In total, they spend about 50% of their work time creating and updating PDFs, spreadsheets, and Word documents.
This is significantly a high number and time spent on taking care of these repetitive tasks can hurt your business financially. But automation is here to save you. It can help strengthen your tasks such as resource allocation and management, time management, financial management, and profit.
In fact, these tasks are not just annoying, but they result in employee burnout. Even if your employees wish to spend time trying new things at work, they waste in these tasks that can simply be automated.
The Performance Puzzle – How Do You Handle Repetitive Tasks
Repetitive tasks and monotonous work are a challenge in any workplace. These are some of the effective ways to handle repetitive tasks at your workplace.
Do’s |
Organizing your workflows: When your tasks are organized it is easier for you to complete them swiftly. So it is okay to spend time organizing your workflows and tidying them up. |
Automate: Automation is the smart way to handle repetitive tasks. With the help of technology, you can automate tasks such as invoicing, data entry, scheduling, and email marketing. |
Outsourcing: You can automate some of the repetitive tasks to free up your time. Check if there are tasks such as administrative work, simple graphic design, data entry, and content writing. Though you need a budget for outsourcing this saves an ample amount of your productive time. |
Standardization using templates: When your tasks are organized using templates you will be spending less time figuring out the repetitive tasks. Standardization is about establishing a defined set of rules that you use to approach specific tasks. This significantly speeds up operations and enhances business productivity in the long run. |
Set a growth mindset: You should adjust your mindset where you need to approach each task from a growth perspective – you need to find out how that specific task helps you grow professionally. You can engage in training activities, reward yourself for completing tasks, and develop a positive attitude. In addition, you can shift your thinking from considering repetitive tasks as daily responsibilities and think about what motivated you to accept the current job. |
Unburden Your Workforce with Cflow’s Automation.
As automation continues to grow more and more businesses are beginning to pilot – but you need to know where to start. Here are some practical tasks that can be automated to save time and optimize your business productivity using Cflow.
Cflow is a cloud-based no-code automation business process automation tool that is highly customizable and easy to use and can be used for optimizing different workflows.
Data management tasks
Data is the animating force of business and managing data is one of the crucial tasks for efficient business performance. Managing data includes collecting, keeping, and securing within the company’s policies and regulations to make informed decisions that maximize benefit to the organization. You need a robust data management strategy and a solid business automation tool like Cflow.
Cflow’s automation enables users with data integration capabilities by combining data sets from different sources into a centralized location. For instance, you have sales data from online and offline stores which you can combine to track traffic and conversions. Data synchronization is done at its best even between different systems like e-commerce platforms to manage inventory and warehouse transactions.
Cflow enables automatic report generation where the data is profiled and formatted with its advanced analytics capabilities that provide useful insights to make informed business decisions. Automatic data entry eliminates the chances of errors and provides better clarity, better security, and enhanced efficiency to your business.
Digital Marketing
Using a content management system your social media posts can be written in batches and scheduled to be published at specific times throughout the week or month. Also, if you want to post articles on your company website then you can use CMS tools like WordPress that provide options to schedule posts in advance or at any selected dates.
You can use Google Alerts to monitor online mentions of your company using search terms from you and your competitors. It automatically processes data and provides real-time information daily. This is a powerful tool to enhance your marketing process.
You can use a web analytics tool like Google Analytics that suits your needs and set up a custom tracking code depending on your website goals. May web analytics tool comes with an API that automatically programs and retrieves traffic data. Also, the web analytics tool can be easily integrated with your CRM systems and other automation tools like Cflow. Cflow enables you to set up automated tracking and regularly monitor how your website is performing.
Now to effectively optimize your marketing campaigns, you need to integrate your CMS with Cflow to streamline your content management workflows. Cflow offers customized content management workflows with different approval stages and rules to include all the relevant members of your marketing team – SEO, content writers, graphic designers, editors, and managers who take care of the content creation, editing, and publishing.
Followup emails
If you are a retailer or a business that sells products, you need to ensure that your sales are optimized by setting up automatic pings for customers who have abandoned carts. Automating ecommerce reminders is easy and you can use a simple marketing automation tool.
Using Cflow you can set up automated workflows to send order updates to the customer at various stages as their order gets fulfilled – order confirmation, shipping details, delivery confirmation, etc. You can also set up a workflow that automatically sends notifications with upcoming sales, replenishing previous orders, promotions, seasonal greetings, and special events.
Event management
Automating event registration can save tons of time and money for both organizers and participants. With an event registration platform like Cvent, Eventbrite, Whova, etc you can set up your event by including the data such as time, date, location, description, and other relevant information related to the event.
You can also integrate Cflow with event registration platforms like Eventbrite, EventZilla, Clickup, Google Forms, etc where you can create customized registration forms and integrate payment with multiple payment options such as credit card, net banking, wire transfer, PayPal, etc. Automate confirmation and reminder emails and monitor attendee data regularly to send them promotions and resources for future events.
Automatic email marketing
Email automation is a powerful marketing tool that lets you streamline the emails and help you send the right email to the right people at the right time. You can set up email campaigning goals and create an email list based on relevant criteria such as demographics, purchase history, site visit, and engagement level.
Set up workflows using Cflow that would send triggered emails based on specific events such as welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, birthdays and special days, contests, special discounts, etc. With Cflow you can streamline your email marketing to target specific audiences, improve engagement levels, and drive better results.
Managing multiple sales channels
Multiple sales channels refer to businesses using more than one sales channel to sell their goods and services to their customers. More and more users make purchases directly using their phones through mobile apps, social media, and online stores. Therefore, the number of sales channels increases according to their sales. Though efficiently managing them would take a lot of work.
End-to-end workflow automation
Build fully-customizable, no code process workflows in a jiffy.
To keep up with the shift towards omnichannel commerce automated inventory management is the smart choice. Cflow can automatically track sales from all channels and sync data – whether the customer brought it from a physical store, online, social media, or mobile app.
Create customized workflows for each sales channel and include all relevant information such as tasks, approvals, and other details. Cflow can handle routine tasks automatically and you can set up the workflows with simple rules. You can also monitor the performance of each sales channel using Cflow’s data reporting and analytics feature.
Landed costs tracking
Landed cost can be defined as the total price of the goods or shipment once it arrives at the buyer’s location. Simply put, it is the total expense of the product including costs such as taxes, freight, storage, commission, insurance, and handling fees.
Automating the process of tracking landed cost has several advantages such as the ability to track the true cost of the products precisely, and enhances informed purchasing and pricing decisions.
Using Cflow you can create a custom workflow to track the landed cost. Initiate the landing cost workflow by defining the cost rule for calculating each landed cost based on the items purchased.
Once you specify information such as delivery date, supplier information, weight/volume of the products, etc the system calculates the landed cost and assigns it to the specific branch automatically.
Inventory management
Manual inventory management involves a series of repetitive tasks that become problematic as your business expands. Here is where a workflow automation tool like Cflow comes in handy to help you manage inventory in real time.
Cflow offers simple workflows such as indent requests, purchases, and returns, issue requests and returns, inventory alteration, scrap conversion, and other customized workflows. It also offers additional features such as automated inventory control and reporting that enable users to easily manage their backend operations using Cflow’s intuitive interface.
Cflow offers comprehensive inventory management solutions thereby eliminating manual repetitive tasks by automating them. It provides automatic reordering which is a crucial feature for managing backend operations from your multiple business channels.
Automated stock transfer is another helpful feature where Cflow allows complete flexibility in transfer controls in finding the right supplier and right location for restocking. Cflow seamlessly integrates with many E-commerce systems and automates order management where you can schedule alerts and notifications.
Automated document management
Your current file management activities can greatly impact your business productivity. How you handle sales documents, contract orders, proposals, and other legal documents needs to be verified and optimized to stop your team from wasting valuable time and losing critical data.
In a recent McAfee report, 80% of employees agreed to request cloud-based file sharing, and another report from Forrester states that 97% of organizations have minimal to no digital documentation and 72% of them used a mix between paper and digital processes.
You need a solid workflow automation system like Cflow that can efficiently automate your document management completely. Using customized workflows with specific approval stages and reporting capabilities, you can tell Cflow which documents to automate where it extracts information and stores it in the cloud in a centralized database.
You can classify and tag stored data and provide access permissions to only people who work on such documents. Cflow eliminates manual document creation and storage and lets businesses go paperless.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
Automating customer support is becoming popular. Automation can help in generating help desk tickets that save time, track resolutions, and respond to inquiries efficiently. Email responding can also be automated simply using Gmail where you can set up a canned response for emails that require frequent response.
In addition, by automating customer relation management you can free up your employees from tedious manual data entry tasks and help them focus on other important tasks such as lead generation, relationship building, content creation, deal confirmations, etc.
Some common CRM platforms include Cflow, Salesforce, and Zoho. Cflow offers automated contract management and lead management where you can securely store customer data and provide access permissions. Also, lead management becomes simple as you can track leads and categorize them based on prospects which helps the sales team to effectively engage with positive prospects and close the deal.
Cflow’s automation is designed as a user-oriented platform that is completely no-code, precise, has an intuitive user interface and sophisticated rules engine, and other customization facilities based on your business needs.
Finance
Do you have clients owing payment? Need to take care of invoicing and payments? You can do it effortlessly using Cflow. You can create simple workflows and automate them to take care of these processes.
Cflow offers workflows for check payment requests, client invoicing, payroll, capex approvals, loan approval processes, accounts payable and receivables, and other custom workflows. These are highly customizable and set up payments for each process such as processing payment, generating invoices, PO approvals, expense reimbursement, procurement, etc.
HR
The recruitment process includes tasks such as – posting job openings, finding candidate information, reviewing resumes, candidate engagement, scheduling meetings, assessing candidates, tracking candidates, and onboarding recruits. Each task may sound simple and can be done manually but imagine going through hundreds of resumes daily to find the right candidate. It becomes a daunting task altogether to do everything manually.
Roughly recruiters spend around 14 hours every week on repetitive tasks that can be automated and companies report a 20% cost reduction in the hiring process using automation tools.
Thanks to ATS and other automation tools, HR professionals now can streamline the entire recruitment process, improve scalability, increase profit, and improve candidate experience with better communication. Cflow offers predefined forms including employee onboarding, leave application process, employee exit process, employee review, advance payment request, etc. You can create specific workflows for each of the recruitment tasks, automate them, and select the right resources for your business efficiently.
Business growth is proportional to staff growth and to ensure employee management takes place smoothly you need to automate team management processes. Automating employee management using Cflow cuts down paperwork, eliminates repetitive tasks, and reduces manual data entry errors.
Administration
Administrative automation is a broad term that encompasses simple email responses to complex business process workflows. Thanks to automation, in recent years administrative automation has gained significant popularity. Gartner predicts that by 2024, automating repetitive low-level administrative tasks can boost productivity and 69% of managerial tasks will be entirely automated.
Using Cflow you can almost entirely automate some of the common administrative tasks such as timesheet tracking, scheduling, customer data management, tracking invoices, expense management, and project management.
Integration with existing software
You can automate integration by consolidating the software applications and their subsystems into an integrated business environment. With Cflow you can enhance this integration process. First, determine which systems you want to integrate with Cflow – it can be a CRM software, ERP system, or any other software of your choice.
Now explore Cflow options – it offers custom API integration options that you can connect using Make. You work with your IT team to ensure there is seamless data exchange. To ensure consistency, define process maps and add synchronization rules and once everything is set up automate the workflows. Now test and monitor the integration to ensure that everything works properly and accurate data is exchanged between the two systems.
Expense automation
You can handle the entire process of handling business expenses using Cflow.
Expense reports can be submitted using Cflow forms containing all the necessary details such as date, submitter details, purpose, category, amount, and attached receipts. Now set up an approval workflow where each stage consists of appropriate managers and reviewers for approving the reimbursement. They ensure that the expense reimbursement is within the company’s policy.
Once approved, the finance department verifies the information and initiates the reimbursement process. The status of the reimbursement process will be notified to the initiator promptly by automatically sending them updates to keep them informed. Cflow also provides real-time report generation that helps keep track of business expenses.
Reporting and analytics
Preparing accounting reports can be tedious and in general, there will be statutory regulations for using prescribed templates and rules. The accountant gathers data from different sources, synthesizes the findings, and applies analytical tools to create reports.
A good portion of this work can be automated using well-established tools. Using a process automation tool like Cflow you can automate these processes to gather information, synthesize, analyze, and generate reports that are stored in a centralized database.
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So, now that you know how important it is to automate repetitive tasks – how about automating them now?
This is where Cflow steps in. Cflow is a no-code automation tool that is constantly evolving and provides comprehensive end-to-end solutions regardless of your business type. Cflow offers a user-friendly interface with a designer dashboard that enables users to drag and drop fields in the form.
Businesses that automate using Cflow have gained valuable insights to improve their operations and enhance their business productivity. Why wait? You can try Cflow today by signing up for a free demo.
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