The rising need for remote work has led to the rising need to automate daily processes. After all, automation can effectively save up to 30% of one’s work time that would otherwise be spent on recurring and relatively unproductive tasks.
Managing a whole team is far from simple, but when you have to deal with streamlining the work of remote teams, things can get even more challenging. This is precisely why contemporary tools for remote teams to put daily tasks on autopilot can prove to be transforming for employee productivity and business as a whole.
Task Automation and Its Benefits
To put it simply, task automation involves the use of specific tools / software that can put the repetitive and manual but much-needed daily tasks on autopilot. That way, your remote team can focus its productive energy on more meaningful tasks.
However, it’s important to mention that introducing automation tools to your workflow carries a lot more benefits than simply taking the load off when it comes to repetitiveness and saving time.
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Minimize operational costs.
Thanks to the possibility to automate tasks such as personal assistance, call tracking, data entry, and similar, you can significantly speed up the workflow and there’s no need to spend money on hiring additional employees.
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Boost reliability.
We can use technology to minimize human error in the first place. This is where automation tools can show their true strength.
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Elevate your team’s potential
The most skilled team in the world won’t be able to produce ideal results if they have to waste their creative and productive power on meaningless and repetitive tasks every single day. With those tasks delegated to automation tools, your team can make the most out of their advanced skills 100%.
That said, let’s go through some of these tools so that you can take your business to the next level and boost the efficiency of your remote teams.
1. Expandi
Using LinkedIn for sales has turned easy and simple thanks to the range of features packed in one tool called Expandi. Essentially, Expandi allows your lead generation team to completely automate a number of outreach activities on LinkedIn without getting flagged.
It enables you to put a variety of tasks on autopilot, from finding the right target audience and creating adequate campaign follow-ups, to customizing the LinkedIn connection message, all with the option to choose message frequencies, limits, and more.
2. actiTIME
Managing a remote team requires efficient time tracking, which is something that actiTIME can help you with. actiTIME smoothly integrates with other tools, making it an effective solution for distributing your tasks and projects fuss-free.
It allows a comprehensive review of working hours via a weekly timesheet as well as useful reports and charts. actiTIME can also be used for invoicing automation, PTO accrual and cost tracking. What’s more, this tool is available as both the Chrome extension and the mobile app.
3. actiPLANS
It’s not just work that you’ll have to manage. Members of your remote team will also have to take leave from time to time. Tracking absence can prove to be more challenging in terms of team productivity, which is where actiPLANS can help you.
As a simple absence management tool, actiPLANS provides an intuitive interface that allows you to smoothly plan and schedule employee absence. It’s available for both desktop and mobile use and can be integrated with the actiTIME time and project management tool.
4. Zapier
Zapier is a go-to automation tool for a bunch of essential yet boring tasks that every business deals with on a daily basis. This particular platform is simple to use and straightforward in its application. It allows the users to connect different apps and platforms and then automate desired actions.
For instance, it’s possible to set automatic save of all Gmail attachments to Google Drive, automatically publish blog posts on social media, instantly back up Google Docs files in Dropbox, and set up thousands of more options.
5. ClickUp
ClickUp is one of the most popular tool choices when project management automation is concerned. It allows for automatically assigning users to specific tasks and comment posting whenever the task status changes. What’s more, it also keeps track of the due dates, automatically changing the task to high priority as the deadline grows closer.
Tools like ClickUp can be incredibly valuable in many cases including, writing and editing blog content, building an online course, preparing for a webinar, and really any other process you need followed by your team. According to ClickUp’s team, the platform is guaranteed to save you all one whole day a week!
6. ActiveCampaign
When it comes to automating your marketing efforts, ActiveCampaign is a great tool that does plenty of work for you. It seamlessly combines email marketing and standard business CRM that works for teams and businesses of all sizes.
Essentially, ActiveCampaign allows for automated targeting and engagement of your audience, tailored guidance for further lead nurturing, custom calls-to-action, personalized customer experience, and more. It’s also worth mentioning that every single version of the software is priced quite reasonably, making it a suitable option for growing enterprises.
7. Leadformly
If your goal is to make things easier for your remote sales team, consider introducing them to Leadformly. This tool works its magic by segmenting the leads and boosting form conversion rates on web pages.
Combining the features of Leadformly and previously mentioned ActiveCampaign is especially beneficial; every valuable piece of data that Leadformly gathers, it sends to ActiveCampaign. That way, your team can utilize the automated processes all the way from pinpointing the highest volume web pages to creating responses and segmented email lists, leaving them room to focus on the final stages of the sales funnel.
8. WordStream
When it comes to paid advertising, it’s always better to start things off with a simpler route. In that sense, features of the WordStream platform can come especially handy to smaller businesses and teams.
For instance, the platform’s 20-minute working week feature is more than enough for setting up and managing basic campaigns completely trouble and stress-free. What’s more, WordStream is a great solution for easing your way into the more complex settings and automation possibilities of Google Ads when PPC marketing is concerned.
9. HelpSystems Automate
Robotic process automation is what makes Automate a great ally to your IT remote team. With three versions available, namely Desktop, Plus, and Ultimate, automating processes such as system auditing, security procedures, data locating, file transferring and similar becomes a breeze. It’s also possible to use Automate for creating entire workflows of combined actions.
Additionally, even employees who have no actual IT knowledge can easily find their way around this software.
Conclusion: Automate to Elevate
Automating recurring daily tasks that don’t actually require the use of employees’ specific skills is key to boosting the team’s efficiency and productivity. More importantly, the practice will save you both money and time.
If your remote team has been struggling with their workload and energy levels, it might be time to give some (or all) of the above-mentioned tools a try.
This article is contributed to actiTIME by Stefan Smulders, a SaaS Entrepreneur and the Founder of the worlds’ safest software for LinkedIn Automation – Expandi.io.
