Home topics small-business-resources growing Growing Tech Growing Automate Your Business Brad Howarth August 1, 2008 Businesses with better things to do rather than deal with the tedious elements of administration will find using software-based automation could save a lot of time and money. Investing in this form of technology will drive down costs and improve quality and use of data . More importantly, s oftware-based automation could make a huge difference in profitability for fast-growing businesses. In any business there are some jobs that are simply not interesting, but are essential. Order entry, invoice processing, and updating catalogues can be tedious and time-consuming, but remain essential to the function of any business. So why not automate them? In most cases the software is already there, and numerous tasks that once fell to pen, paper, and a calculator, have been coded into software and mass marketed to business. What started with accounting and payroll has moved on into human resources, supply chain and logistics, and sales force and customer relationship management (CRM). For most businesses, large and small, it would not be conceivable to operate without at least some of these software technologies in place to take the pain out of running the business. For a simple example of software-based automation, think about a giftware company that operates a sales website. Obviously the website needs to be filled with products and offers. By linking the site to the company’s inventory and order management system, that information can now be published to