My Top 5 Small Business Automation Tools I Tested in 2024
This blog post explores the top 5 small business automation tools that can transform and scale your business. If your business is anything like mine, you’ll already know how transformative online business tools are for small business success. You can use Google Workspace or Slack for collaboration, ClickUp, Asana, or Trello for tasks, Monday.com or HubSpot for CRMs, etc, etc. These tools are awesome for productivity, collaboration, efficiency, and business growth.
Automating Your Small Business
But what if I told you there was a way these tools could automatically share information, saving your small business hours every week? This is where business automation tools step in to save the day. Leveraging the power of technology can be a game-changer, and automation tools are at the forefront of this transformation. If you want to explore some recommended online business tools for small business, you can click here.
What Are Business Automation Tools?
A business automation tool is essentially a platform that helps bridge the gap between your favorite online tools. These tools enable a two-way sync with your favorite platforms, allowing you to connect and automate processes, workflows, and tasks across multiple online tools. Depending on the platform, these automations can range from simple data entry tasks to complex business operations.
Typically, business automation tools have a user-friendly interface (often with drag-and-drop functionality) where you can construct workflows by connecting different actions and triggers. These tools usually don’t require any code, and they generally include pre-built templates that integrate with various popular business tools and apps. This approach means anyone can easily create, manage, and deploy automated processes, even those with no technical expertise!
Top 5 Small Business Automation Tools
These tools aim to streamline repetitive tasks, reduce human error, boost efficiency, and ultimately save small business owners time and resources. Small business automation tools can help connect all your favorite business apps and platforms together, which is invaluable for automating your business processes and tasks.
You may even already be using these platforms! Automations within email marketing tools like Mailchimp or Klaviyo can help personalize customer journeys, segment lists, and send targeted, trigger-based campaigns. ActiveCampaign, a hybrid email marketing CRM platform, has over 950 no-code automation recipes to help you gather customer data, send automated emails, distribute leads, and more.
HubSpot, a popular all-in-one marketing tool can automate your forms, ticket statuses and actions, emails, sequences, workflows, and deals. Basically, you can use HubSpot’s automation templates to automate all areas of your business!
With Monday.com, a comprehensive work management platform, you can simply automate your projects, tasks, or contacts with ease. In one click, you can change statuses, send notifications, create or move items or subitems, set up dependencies, and much more through their dynamic automation workflow templates. These built-in automations essentially mean you don’t have to connect with a third-party business automation tool.
Introducing Zapier
One of the best simple business automation tools is Zapier. You’ve likely heard of Zapier, a popular platform designed to automate workflows and tasks between your favorite online tools without writing a single line of code. By creating automated sequences (Zaps), you can easily set up triggers and actions between your favorite apps to streamline your daily tasks and operations. Did you know that Zapier integrates with over 7000 apps? Chances are, Zapier will integrate with every online tool you use daily!
Zaps can essentially be set up using the ‘if X, then do Y’ multi-step workflow format across multiple platforms to cut down the time spent on repetitive tasks daily significantly. Thanks to Zapier tables, you can store, edit, and automate your third-party data in one easy to use database. And the newly introduced Interfaces feature means you can design web pages, forms, and apps infused with interactive elements! These can then be connected with your favorite apps to further streamline and automate.
Image Source: What's Next in Business Automation - Event in London
