Whether you are developing a business solution for mass clients or fine-tuning an existing one for a client or your own business, automation is an ingredient you cannot afford to neglect. Automation allows businesses to operate at scale without expanding their organization or allocating more resources. Needless to say, automation is the way forward.

But automation in business is not something to approach without a plan. Developers need to know how to utilize automation in an effective way to serve business purposes. These next few tips and tricks will help you add automation to business solutions in an effective and targeted way. Let’s get started, shall we?

Start with Repetitive Tasks

Rather than trying to shorten workflows or tackle big challenges immediately, automation needs to be utilized to eliminate mundane, repetitive tasks first. This is the easiest way to implement automation without jumping through hoops. It is also the most impactful when executed correctly.

Automating the creation of a sales report, for example, can free up valuable time and energy. Sales executives can focus on making calls or chasing new leads rather than working on reports for several hours. The same approach can be taken to accounts payable. Automation makes the entire process easier and makes it less prone to fraud. Automation results also in a paperless AP process, which saves time and resources.

On a larger scale, automation allows for different workflows within the organization to be integrated. For example, a new order from a customer can trigger the creation of a production order for the ordered items. A few integration routines are all that is needed.

Integrate Multiple Solutions

That actually brings us to the second tip, which is – integrate! Automation is the perfect way to integrate multiple business solutions, especially solutions that are not meant to be integrated natively. Through the automation of certain tasks, multiple business solutions can be made to work together.

For example, you can sync contacts between Mailchimp and Pipedrive using PieSync. PieSync is a data synchronization tool that also supports triggers, multiple business platforms and solutions, and advanced automation routines. Using PieSync leads in Pipedrive can be tagged whenever a new email, a remarketing campaign, or other digital marketing activities specifically target them. On the other hand, emails can be delivered automatically when certain Pipedrive parameters are met.

Focus on Results

There are times when automation does not produce the desired results. In some situations, human input is still needed, so automating everything is not necessarily the approach you want to adopt. This is where wisdom as a developer who understands business processes is badly needed.

A good way to avoid automating the wrong tasks is to focus on the results. Does automation make the task easier to complete? Does it free up resources? Does it still produce the same results – the desired ones – as when the task is done manually?

Another good practice is taking your users’ input into consideration when automating tasks. There are routines, steps, and other elements that can be integrated with the automation runtime in order to achieve better results.

With these three tips and tricks in mind, automation of business tasks doesn’t have to be complicated. You will always find ways to add automation to business solutions with the help of APIs, native tools, and other services.