We live in a world where automation is taking over workplaces and handling tasks without any human intervention.
In these times, doing everything on your own isn’t only time-consuming but costs you money. Whether you’re a small business owner or the CEO of a large corporation, if you’re not using your resources efficiently, you’re missing out on a sea of opportunities.
Luckily, there are a variety of services available that can help you save money and increase the efficiency of your business.
In this article, we’ll explore seven services that take care of the redundant and repetitive tasks for you, so you can focus on what’s more critical in your business.
Let’s dive in.
1. A travel management software to avail business discounts
Businesses use a travel management software to manage their travel expenses, including booking flights, hotels, rental cars, and other travel-related expenses.
A good travel management software can help businesses save money in several ways.
By consolidating all travel-related expenses into one platform
You gain better visibility into your travel spending. This way, you can analyze your and your associates’ travel patterns and identify areas where you can save money, such as by negotiating better rates with vendors or changing their travel policies.
Helps businesses track and control their travel expenses
All you need to do is set travel policies and budgets, and your travel management software will enforce them. It does that by alerting employees when they exceed their budget or book outside the company’s preferred vendors.
This way, you can prevent unnecessary expenses and help businesses stay within their travel budget.
Helps businesses acquire the best hotel and business discounts
Accommodations can cost a fortune, but with a travel management software, you can save up significantly. These softwares negotiate corporate rates with large hotel chains before and help you avail business hotel discounts for your company.
Offers real-time data and reporting
Businesses can access real-time information on their travel spending and use this data to make adjustments to their travel policies, negotiate better rates with vendors, or identify areas where they can save money.
Streamlines the travel booking process
It can automate the travel booking process, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors. This can lead to a more efficient and cost-effective travel management process.
2. An AI-based inbox management tool to organize your inbox
Cleaning cluttered inboxes and going through thousands of unread emails are no one’s favourite ways to end a long tiring day or a weekend. With the sheer volume of emails and messages, we receive every day, it can be challenging to keep up with everything, leading to missed opportunities and a lot of stress.
What if we tell you there’s a way you can label all the good and useless stuff from your inbox, so you can easily delete all the useless stuff with one click?
This is something you can achieve through inbox management with AI that categorizes your emails effectively.
AI-powered inbox management tools use machine learning algorithms to analyze your emails and identify patterns, enabling them to sort your inbox automatically. These tools can group your emails into categories, such as personal, work, social media, promotions, and so on. This saves you time and energy, allowing you to be more productive and efficient with your work.
3. A meetings tool that makes collaboration fun
Let’s be honest—we all get overwhelmed by meetings—especially those that serve no purpose to us and our work. Creating meeting agendas help ensure you cover the important bits in a meeting and only devote the necessary time in the discussion.
For example, if you’re jumping on a sales call with your clients, there needs to be agenda that specifies what you’re going to discuss on the meeting and what are the sales objectives.
Fortunately, there are tools that help you prepare in advance for meeting and even make notes to make your all meetings productive and fulfilling. They even provide you with templates such as a sales meeting agenda template that you can use to create specific agendas for your sales meetings.
As a result, you convert your boring meetings into productive work sessions and save time.
4. An HR management tool to streamline the hiring process
Hiring can be a time-consuming and costly affair without the right tools and resources.
Let’s say you’re hiring for a role to fill up a single position and, for that, have to source 100s of candidates. You’re going to deal with at least 15-20 of them for a few weeks just to select one candidate. Unfortunately, that one candidate rejects your job offer closer to the joining date.
Do you see the problem here?
You’re investing way too much time and energy to fill up one position. If you could have just contacted a candidate from your personal database, it would have saved you much trouble.
That’s where an HR management system takes charge and automates the redundant tasks for you, including sending emails and letters, sourcing candidates matching job descriptions, tracking candidate status, onboarding candidates, screening candidate resumes, and so on.
5. Accounting and financial services to get more power over money
Honestly, handling finance and accounting matters is not everyone’s cup of tea. More importantly, these tasks can be overwhelming for someone handling the business single-handedly.
For example, businesses need to comply with various accounting standards and regulations, and financial reporting is an integral part of it. Especially when it comes to financial statements, such as balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements, it takes expertise to handle such tasks.
Finance and accounting tasks require specialized skills and expertise, and outsourcing provides access to professionals with the necessary knowledge and experience. Moreover, such tasks require a high degree of accuracy, and errors can have significant consequences for businesses.
6. Digital marketing services to increase brand awareness
Digital marketing is a massive landscape that everyone should try and conquer today. Particularly if you’re a growing business that needs to target multiple channels for customer acquisition, it’s crucial to outsource your digital marketing efforts.
Here’s why:
You scale your efforts and reach more of your target customers in less time
You’re able to quantify your results in terms of metrics, which provides a more realistic viewpoint
Digital marketing approaches, including social media platforms, paid advertising, email marketing, and content marketing, are generally more affordable than traditional advertising methods
Since a digital marketing strategy uses a data-driven approach, it provides a higher return on investment (ROI) than traditional marketing methods
Best practices to win at digital marketing
Outsource tasks you’re not an expert at. For example, if you haven’t ever been active on social media, it’s best to hire a social media manager that takes care of the strategy and posting for you.
Invest in marketing tools such as an email marketing software, an SEO tool, or a marketing automation tool to let go of the heavy-lifting tasks.
Hire a team or outsource tasks that don’t require much of your expertise.
Create an online branding and marketing plan every year—outline your goals, KPIs, and strategies to ensure you’re on the right track.
Define your target audience clearly, as it’s the foundation of any successful digital marketing campaign.
7. Customer support services to retain more customers
Outsourcing customer support is a popular way for businesses to provide quality customer service while reducing costs. It means hiring a third-party company to handle customer service on behalf of your business.
Best practices for outsourcing customer support Identify the need for outsourcing. If you have large volumes of customer inquiries, complex customer requests, and lesser availability of in-house resources, it’s time for you to outsource.Look for outsourcing companies with experience in their industry and a track record of providing high-quality customer support. It’s important to establish clear communication channels, service level agreements (SLAs), and key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure the outsourcing partner meets expectations.Businesses should provide comprehensive training to the outsourcing partner, including information about the company’s products, services, and processes.Once the outsourcing partner is up and running, businesses should monitor and evaluate their performance regularly. This includes tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as response times, resolution rates, and customer satisfaction scores.
Consider what’s best for your business and make informed decisions
By outsourcing non-core tasks, businesses can free up time and resources to focus on core competencies, improve efficiency, and reduce costs.
On one hand, cloud-based services such as email marketing software, inbox management software, and SEO software help businesses save money by eliminating the need for expensive hardware and infrastructure. On the other hand, using project management and collaboration tools help them streamline workflows and improve team communication, leading to increased productivity and reduced costs.
Assess your business goals and analyze the areas you need help with—and outsource or delegate those tasks. You’ll see your business take off in no time.
Author’s Bio
Deepali is an engineer-turned-freelance writer for B2B SaaS, writing actionable long-form content for marketing, Cybersecurity, and HR-Tech companies. When she’s not writing, she’s engrossed in a cozy murder mystery novel with a cup of hot chocolate!
