No Department Left Behind: Why Automation Is Crucial to Every Team

In 2018, businesses will waste $900 billion in digital transformation spending, because 70% of digital initiatives won’t achieve their goals. In the wake of these numbers, many organizations are asking: why do so many digital transformation projects fail? And what can companies do to increase their chances of success?

There’s no doubt that tech adoption is part of the problem. Today, most business processes can benefit from new technologies designed to help employees work smarter. To create truly efficient workflows, you need to ensure that every team can easily leverage the tools they need to be productive—including automation. Here are some of the most recent findings on departmental tech and why automation is crucial to the digital transformation of every team.

Sales: Enabling Collaborative Selling with a Customer 360°

Sales can be a powerful revenue-creating engine for any organization, and technology is amplifying that effect. According to a Salesforce survey, high-performing sales teams use almost three times more technology than underperforming teams.

Part of that equation is because technology can enable collaborative selling, where multiple personas and teams work together to close a deal. 73% of sales teams say that cross-department collaboration is critical to their overall sales cycle. Almost two-thirds of sales professionals say that collaborative selling has increased productivity by more than 25%; more than half say it’s increased their pipelines significantly.

This collaboration can’t happen, however, if sales doesn’t have easy access to information stored outside of their CRM—and many teams just don’t. While 68% of sales pros say it’s important to have a single, 360° view of customers across departments and roles, only 17% of sales teams would rate their ability to have a 360° view as “outstanding.”

See three ways that intelligent automation can help sales pros sell smarter >

HR: Getting the Best ROI From Cloud Adoption

Like many back-end departments, HR is often one of the last teams to see technological change. According to Deloitte, 47% of companies have HR software that is over seven years old.

That’s not ideal for HR teams; an Information Services Group study indicates that 48% of HR professionals say they want to replace their current HR software with a cloud-based system in 2018. Of those employees, 54% say they’re pushing for replacement because they need better features and functionality.

At the same time, cloud-based HR software now accounts for more than 50% of total HR technology spending. That means that companies are answering HR’s call for new technology—but it also means that HR teams must rebuild their workflows to account for these new apps.

With such high stakes, it’s important to make sure your HR department is getting the best ROI from their move to the cloud. Companies with newly upgraded HR systems can see cost savings of 22% per employee, but that number can fall if disconnected systems create new inefficiencies. Automation and integration can help ensure that HR makes the most of cloud adoption by streamlining workflows that involve multiple apps or systems.

Learn about how automation can make your HR team more efficient >

Marketing: Mastering the MarTech Stack for Better Results

Did you know that in 2017, MarTech spending accounted for 22% of enterprise marketing budgets?

Despite the proliferation of new MarTech, however, teams still struggle to use those tools in a coordinated way. According to DiscoverOrg, 48% of teams say that delivering a consistent multi-channel customer experience was a pain point in 2017. Similarly, 45% said that they faced difficulties in tracking and measuring their marketing initiatives across channels.

Those are significant problems for any marketing team; after all, if you can’t easily measure your effectiveness, you won’t know which strategies and initiatives are worth investing in. And if you can’t consistently shape a strong customer journey, you’re conversion rate will suffer.

Automation can help marketing teams create fully-integrated MarTech stacks. Connecting your apps doesn’t just increase initial conversions; it can impact customer retention and upsell as well by making personalized interactions easier to execute. Integration also gives you a more robust pool of marketing data to analyze, so you can see which initiatives are truly working.

See how Logitech’s Ultimate Ears Pro scaled their digital marketing through automation >

IT Ops: Doing More for Digital Transformation with Less

In an increasingly tech-driven world, IT has become the backbone of many companies. As a team, IT Ops is often responsible for executing on digital initiatives.

But as digital transformation continues to be a top priority for enterprises across the globe, IT Ops faces an increasingly heavy burden. Keeping up with basic service level requirements is already challenging; when IT Ops must also support new initiatives, it’s no surprise that over 75% of IT professionals say that pressure on their processes is increasing, according to Freeform Dynamics.

At the same time, IT Ops spending is slowing year-by-year. According to Statista, spending grew by 2.5% in 2016. But the same study indicated that it would grow by 2.37% in 2018 and by only 2.1% in 2020.

In other words, IT Ops has to do more with less every year. Thus it’s crucial that teams work at maximum efficiency. Automation can play a big part in achieving this goal by streamlining repetitive processes (such as responding to helpdesk requests) and freeing up teams to focus on longer-term projects.

Read about why IT Ops needs a new approach to automation >

Support: Effectively Meeting KPIs and Delivering Top-Notch Service

Customer support professionals are truly the unsung heroes of any company. They’re responsible for ensuring client satisfaction when things go wrong—a demanding job. Though it may not be as highly visible as teams like sales, support is just as key to a company’s growth; Bain and Co. estimate that an increase in customer retention of only 5% can increase profits from 25%-95%.

Support professionals’ lives are much easier thanks to the explosion of SaaS apps and other emerging technologies. But like other teams, app silos can spell disaster for time-sensitive support workflows. If information isn’t available across your apps in real-time, processes from ticket triage to escalation can suffer. That directly affects KPIs like mean time to resolution—which can be the difference between customer retention and customer churn. In fact, a Zendesk report estimates that companies that use robust analytics (with access to a strong pool of data from all the relevant apps) can reduce full resolution time by roughly 16%!

Automation is a great tool for executing crucial support workflows quickly, with minimal human effort. By automating processes like ticket triage, for example, you free up reps to focus on tasks that need a more human touch, such as speaking with a particularly dissatisfied customer. Automation can also unlock crucial tools like the Net Promoter Score (NPS). By providing a holistic view of especially pleased (or displeased) customers, NPS equips support to leverage brand ambassadors and better prevent churn.

Customer support is key to shaping a great customer journey. Learn More >

Want to know more about how automation can transform every department? See how we did it in our free ebook >