As a small business owner, you wear many hats. You are the marketer, the accountant, the customer service rep, and so on. Unsurprisingly, it can get overwhelming fast. There are only so many hours in a day, and when you spend most of your time on repetitive, manual tasks, it doesn’t leave much time for growth or for doing the things you enjoy. That's where workflow automation comes in. In this article on workflow automation for small businesses, we'll discuss how it can help your business run more smoothly, efficiently, and with fewer manual tasks.
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Workflow automation utilizes software to automate tasks and processes. This reduces the manual effort required to carry out repetitive operations—such as sending follow-up emails or obtaining approvals—and helps streamline business activities. While automation can sound complex, it’s often pretty simple.
For example, you can set up a workflow so that when a prospect fills out a form on your website, they automatically receive a personalized email from your company. This reduces the manual effort required to complete the task, while speeding up the process and improving accuracy. In short, workflow automation enables your business to run more smoothly and efficiently.
Most business owners dream of eliminating the pinch points of daily operations. Less paperwork, better communication, and fewer breakdowns help everything run more smoothly—and boost employee morale. Instead of entering data manually, consider automating tasks to free your team from repetitive work.
This speeds up workflows, giving employees more time to engage with customers, be creative, and train for specialized roles.
Workflow automation tools can streamline follow-up calls, drip emails, finance approvals, and other time-consuming tasks. Workflow automation is a method for simplifying and automating tasks and manual processes to improve efficiency and reduce errors. It helps minimize busy work and frees employee time for more creative and lucrative pursuits.
Time savings are a big deal. According to Microsoft’s Work Trends Index, 64 percent of employees report struggling to fit their work into the allotted time. Additionally, according to ProcessMaker, employees spend an average of 50 percent of their time on repetitive tasks, such as creating or updating:
Another 10 percent is spent on manual data entry. You can automate both simple and complex workflows. For instance, a human resources (HR) workflow might involve only one employee and the internal HR department, while a finance workflow could span several layers, from the employee to the chief financial officer.
Workflow automation enables you to track each step in real-time, enhancing reporting, testing accuracy, and cross-departmental collaboration. You can tweak bottlenecks on the fly and automatically transfer data between tools, such as enterprise resource planning software or CRM systems, for smooth, connected operations.
Kathryn Schwab, founder of health and wellness web design firm Make It Count Creative Solutions LLC, relies on workflow automation to save time, reduce mistakes, and keep things running smoothly.
“It makes sure leads get followed up with, invoices go out on time and appointments are scheduled effortlessly—all while giving customers a better experience,” Schwab explained. “By taking repetitive tasks off your plate, automation lets you focus on growing your business and building real connections with your clients.”
Workflow automation brings your business the following immediate and long-term benefits:
This boosts your bottom line. It can also free up capital to invest in marketing or other initiatives that drive growth for your company.
“In most businesses, 80 percent of the results (revenue and profit) come from 20 percent of the work,” Aggarwal explained. “The rest is what I call the drudgery of work. Automation eliminates these bottlenecks and allows the business to scale.”
To run a smooth and profitable online business, it is essential to automate specific tasks. As you get started, you will encounter many repetitive tasks and processes that will consume a significant amount of your time. Workflow automation helps you:
For example, you can create an automation to reduce the time it takes to process incoming leads and improve response times. Then, as your business grows, you can further enhance your operations by automating the workflows of your team members and any virtual assistants you hire.
To kickstart your understanding of workflow automation, let’s look at 13 practical examples across different business functions.
Marketing and sales departments can utilize automations in the following ways:
Workflow automation can help automate repetitive tasks, facilitate remote employee collaboration, streamline the lead conversion process, and enable the simultaneous management of multiple campaigns from a single dashboard.
Workflow management systems streamline sales funnels, automating lead follow-up to ensure every lead gets the same treatment. You can also track customers, send drip and personalized emails to new prospects, and send coupons to drive higher revenues from existing and potential clients.
Here are ways automations can help you improve the customer experience:
Increase customer retention by creating a ticketing system that:
Gather survey data to track how you’re doing as a business by sending a short questionnaire following each sale or contact.
Connect your system to your courier or dispatch company’s platform to schedule shipments and send customers timely, automated notifications about expected delivery times. If you dispatch service technicians to visit clients, automation can help assign the right technician to each case based on their skill set.
Automation can improve day-to-day business operations across departments.
Workflow automation can streamline facility operations by handling tasks such as:
It can also simplify maintenance requests, manage complaint tracking, and even help with submitting and reviewing new product ideas.
Workflow automation streamlines vendor management, inventory pricing tracking, and invoice and capital approval processes.
Automation can help your administrative processes run more smoothly:
Workflow automation can free up accounting and finance teams by automating payroll management and integrating data with third-party apps. It can also:
Automate and streamline workflows so your HR team can:
Automation can also simplify time clocks and time and attendance tracking.
Even highly specialized departments can benefit from workflow automation.
Workflow automation helps IT teams:
Automation can streamline tasks such as client intake forms and contract reviews. Legal teams can also automate supply chain compliance by:
Human resource departments have multiple processes, so automating their mundane tasks allows them to shift their focus to their core tasks. Here are a few examples:
Managing finance and accounting can be challenging, but automation simplifies and optimizes these processes.
Workflow automation with customer relationship management can help automate your business tasks for the mundane tasks:
Purchase workflow automation can help streamline the process of making purchases and invoicing for them.
IT workflow automation can help in making the tech personnel busy with the main tasks:
The AI workflow automation can help in all the business processes for all companies:
Here are some brief examples of legal workflow automation:
Here are some brief examples of sales process workflow automation:
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Aggarwal advises breaking workflows into clear steps before building automations, especially when they involve different stakeholders and require multiple approvals.
"First, businesses map out the steps in their manual processes, identifying repetitive tasks like invoice approvals or customer follow-ups," Aggarwal explained. "Next, automation tools [link] applications and replicate human actions. Finally, the workflow is coordinated in an automated fashion, sometimes with zero human intervention."
The following is a simplified approach to designing an automated workflow:
Determine a process that delivers a high return on investment. “Devote ample time to strategizing your long-term automation roadmap,” Aggarwal advised. “Pick one friction point, like customer onboarding or invoice approvals, and focus on scoring a tangible ROI [return on investment].”
Set an automation goal. Would you like to expedite the process and make it smoother? Do you want to increase efficiency? Your goal will help you focus on the task.
Communicate goals and gather user feedback to refine your workflow design and ensure your employees are on board.
Use automated workflow software with a drag-and-drop interface to organize tasks visually. Seeing how tasks connect makes it easier to design a workflow that moves logically from point A to point B. Test and edit the static process before building the automated process.
Test the automated workflow to ensure it streamlines the process, saves time and improves ROI. If it does, continue using it to maximize efficiency. If it’s too complex or buggy — or team members don’t like it — brainstorm ways to improve it. “Apply the lessons learned from that success to your next project,” Aggarwal recommended. “This scaled approach helps you stay committed while benefiting from smaller, faster gains.”
When rolling out workflow automations, consider the following tips and expert advice:
Implementing automation can have a long-term impact on your business, so approach it with the seriousness it deserves.
“You should be sure of what you want to achieve, involve the right people and define what success means from the outset,” advised Phil Bridges, Managing Partner at Droidal, a Texas-based AI and Automation firm.
Aggarwal agrees that involving the right stakeholders from the outset is essential. “Many companies hand off the task to a junior engineer without enough context, which can lead to short-term relief but bigger bottlenecks long term,” Aggarwal cautioned. “Give the jobs to the people who can cope with them.”
Melissa Ambers, Chief Transformation and Strategy Officer at Strategic Blueprint Consulting LLC, emphasized the importance of using consistent, current, and accurate data. Poor-quality data results in wasted time fixing errors, inaccurate dashboards, misinformed staff, and misleading insights that impact decision-making.
“Don’t cling to legacy processes and outdated systems because that’s how you’ve always done it,” Ambers warned. “Ignoring data quality when implementing workflow automation can lead to errors, inefficiencies, and vulnerabilities that threaten the entire organization.”
Tackle simpler tasks like invoice approvals or basic data entry first. These can be launched quickly, build project momentum, and help staff become invested in the process.
“A common mistake that businesses make is that they try to automate the most complicated, tedious process so their staff won’t have to deal with it,” Bridges cautioned. “This mistake delays ROI and can ruin the business’s trust in the new technology.”
Even with complex automations, try to simplify the process as much as possible. Start with a minimum viable automation, then refine it based on user feedback. “Some teams chase the ‘perfect system’ for months, only for employees to ignore it,” Aggarwal warned. “Focus on quick wins and train your team well.”
Schwab cautioned against automating tasks that require human judgment or a personal touch, like custom pricing discussions or complex client interactions. “While automation is great for streamlining repetitive tasks, it shouldn’t replace meaningful conversations that build trust and relationships,” Schwab explained.
Charles Crouchman, Chief Product Officer at Redwood Software, emphasized the importance of tracking the results of the automations you implement.
“ROI is measured by comparing the number of tasks completed before and after automated tools are implemented,” Crouchman explained. “Keep a firm eye on these numbers to determine success and look for further improvements.”
Crouchman emphasized that investing in employee training is crucial for the successful implementation of automation.
“When introducing automation to the product cycle, companies need training for every individual (new hires as well as legacy employees) who touches that system to ensure a full understanding of new processes,” Crouchman explained. “Training can take anywhere from a few weeks up to six months, depending on the sophistication of the new technology.”
The rapid developments in artificial intelligence over recent years will significantly shape the future of workflow automation software in numerous ways. Here are some trends to watch for:
Bridges believes the future of workflow automation software will be agentic AI; essentially, digital employees trained to work alongside humans. Unlike traditional bots, these agents can:
Bridges noted that AI agents could automate up to 50 percent of administrative tasks across many industries, completing workflows up to 15 times faster than a skilled human, and with far fewer errors, thanks to precise programming based on company standard operating procedures.
The impact on hiring and growth strategies will be significant. As Bridges puts it, businesses will soon shift from asking, “How many people do we need to hire?” to “How much of this can we automate?” In this new model, automation leads and staffing follow, with expert employees brought in to manage and complement the existing systems.
Kerstin Woods, vice president of solutions and outbound marketing at Toshiba America Business Solutions, builds on the concept of agentic AI with what she calls anticipatory AI—automation that doesn’t just replace manual tasks but predicts what’s coming next.
With AI becoming more deeply embedded in business systems, Woods sees workflow automation evolving into a proactive tool that can anticipate and execute the next step in a process.
“[With] the incorporation of AI, workflow automation will evolve into what I term ‘anticipatory AI,’ Woods shared. “This advanced form of automation won’t merely eliminate repetitive tasks and redundancies; it will proactively anticipate and execute next steps, optimizing business processes in ways we haven’t yet imagined.”
Boris Lapouga, co-founder of workflow automation firm Primetime, envisions a future where workflows are driven by user prompts instead of predefined, step-by-step instructions.
Instead of setting up a predefined sequence, a user might simply say, “Here’s a new marketing job opening—post it on LinkedIn and Indeed, add it to our CRM, find candidates in our database and email me the top three.” From there, multiple AI agents would spring into action, each:
Lapouga calls this shift “sometimes magical,” as it relies on GenAI’s ability to interpret high-level requests and delegate tasks among specialized agents. With the proper understanding of a company’s tools and data, he says, these agents can decide how to execute each step on their own—unlocking what he describes as “near-limitless potential” for automating complex workflows from a single prompt.
Shoeb Javed, Chief Product Officer at iGrafx, views generative AI as the next major leap in workflow automation. Unlike traditional automations that follow fixed steps, generative AI can interpret unstructured data, anticipate roadblocks, and propose entirely new approaches.
“This shift could mean businesses operate more efficiently, cutting costs while freeing employee time up to focus on strategy and creativity,” Javed predicted. “But with all this potential from AI comes the need for strong ethical frameworks because smarter automation also means greater responsibility in how we use it.”
Even as AI tools grow more powerful, Ambers emphasized that human involvement remains essential. AI isn’t meant to replace people but to work alongside them. Ambers explained that AI still relies on human prompts, context, and oversight to function effectively. Incorporating a HITL approach helps improve accuracy and ensures that ethical considerations are built into the automation process.
Ambers compares generative AI to a well-stocked toolbox, a resource that frees people to focus on higher-value work. “It’s time to stop staring at the wall or a blank piece of paper,” Ambers asserted, “and start using AI as the valuable tool it is.”
Schwab is enthusiastic about the growing ability of automation to detect and respond to human emotions through emotional AI and sentiment analysis.
“[This technology] allows AI-powered systems to detect customer emotions in emails, chats and calls,” Schwab explained. “For example, if a customer sounds frustrated in a message, automation can quickly spot the issue and escalate it to a human representative.”
This type of emotional intelligence enables businesses to respond more quickly and empathetically, making customers feel heard and valued while still reaping the benefits of automation’s efficiency.
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