When a big chunk of your business involves people installing new A/V technology or servicing the equipment you’ve already put in place, automation might not be the first business improvement that comes to mind. However, business automation and employee productivity have a direct and positive correlation.
When you look at time usage across a variety of repetitive, manual tasks your employees are performing, business automation is the key to increasing employee productivity in your pro A/V business.
Understanding Services and Automation in the Pro A/V Industry
Pro A/V managed services are hands-on and time-intensive, requiring staff resources to install and service equipment. Managing the details associated with scheduling, inventory, purchasing, customer relationship management, time tracking, billing, and everything in between is complex, to say the least.
The manual entry aspect of all these processes is often repetitive but error-prone. Manual entry for billing, time tracking, scheduling, etc. requires double-checking records for accuracy. Overall, it’s a time-consuming, laborious set of tasks for employees. And if you’re relying on spreadsheets to make it happen? That can hurt your company value, too.
Meanwhile, the business is also flooded with calls, customer service requirements and any number of additional tasks for those same employees to manage. When things really heat up, cutting corners or not devoting the time necessary for things like customer communications can reduce productivity where it’s needed most.
This can also impact customer retention, conversions, and the overall bottom line.
The Problem with Manual Tasks
Sometimes manual entry is unavoidable. However, automation can take over many of the time-sucking tasks holding your employees back. For example, when field techs are calling the office to update info or, even worse, submitting paper forms for someone else to digitize, efficiency is lost.
73% of IT leaders say that thanks to automation success, employees are saving between 10 and 50% of the time they previously spent doing manual tasks. (frevvo.com)
Those are not small numbers when you add things up either. On the low end, that means four hours are saved each week or 16 each month. On the high end, it’s 20 hours a week and 80 hours each month—for each full-time employee.
Take that time saved and start thinking about how it can now be used to better serve customers and grow and expand your business.
Why Automation Increases Productivity and Your Bottom Line
We’ve established the obvious time savings associated with automation but how exactly does that correlate to productivity?
When tasks are automated, your employees have more time to allocate across the business. Reducing or eliminating draining, repetitive tasks has a positive impact on employee satisfaction. Plus, freeing up time in your team’s schedule provides an opportunity to educate and train on important, new processes. Keeping up with technology changes is vital to staying competitive and growing your business, especially in managed technology services channels.
Studies show that 74% of employees in the most automated companies say automation improves job satisfaction, compared to 53% in highly manual companies. (make.com)
This is an important statistic as it relates to productivity because those employees will stay longer and work more diligently on improving customer satisfaction and outcomes overall. You might say that positive attitudes are infectious and can have a positive impact on business altogether.
The customer satisfaction piece leads to higher retention rates and more profitability in direct and recurring sales. Your bottom line also improves by building automated efficiencies into the business and using fewer employee hours on those tasks. You are essentially doing more with less and saving on costs.
Inefficient processes cost companies 20 to 30% of revenue every year. (forbes.com)
By automating processes and strategically using your employees’ time to better serve the business, the cost savings can be immense.
How Tigerpaw Fits in Your Business
You might be thinking “That sounds great, but I don’t have time to totally change my business processes.” We get that. Many of the business owners and managers we encounter are wrapped up in tasks and say the same thing. But it’s worth looking at the real savings—in time and money—you can gain when you start working on your business versus in it.
Tracking field technicians and subcontractors while working the customer side and keeping up with billing, invoicing, inventory management and everything else on a long to-do list is flat out overwhelming and results in more problems than you may even realize. If you’re struggling with any of these issues, it might be time to consider business automation software.
Tigerpaw One can automate a sizable chunk of your team’s managerial and daily tasks, leaving more time to focus on the customer and the big picture. After all, our core purpose is “To help technology services companies run better businesses and sleep better at night.” Here’s how we do it.
So, are you ready to increase employee productivity in your business? Reach out to our team for a no-obligation demo to see how it works!