We’re at a turning point in how businesses operate. Automation is a growth engine for small and midsize businesses. According to recent reports, SMBs are not playing catch up with new technologies like they have in the past; they’re leading the charge into the AI-powered future.
If your business is feeling the pressure of complexity, inefficiency, or limited capacity, automation might be your next strategic move.
Here are five signs your business is ready, and how Teal can help you take the leap.
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1. You’re Drowning in Repetitive Tasks
Your Sign
Your team spends hours on manual, repetitive work such as onboarding new employees, resetting passwords, matching invoices, or generating reports.
Your Opportunity to Automate
These are exactly the kinds of tasks that modern automation excels at. According to Pax8’s report, today’s advanced tools – sometimes called “digital workers” or autonomous AI agents – can take over 70–90% of complex, repetitive workflows.
According to DataForest, businesses leveraging this technology have reported 60–80% reductions in operational costs, making it one of the most impactful ways to boost efficiency and scale without overextending your team.
How Teal Can Help Eliminate Repetitive Tasks
At Teal, we offer automation solutions that handle the routine, time-consuming tasks that slow your team down. This frees your team to focus on strategic initiatives that drive growth and innovation.
2. Your Onboarding Process Slows Down Growth
Your Sign
Bringing on new employees feels like a bottleneck. It takes days to set up accounts, assign tools, provide training, and get them fully operational – delaying productivity and frustrating both new hires and managers.
Your Opportunity to Automate
These are exactly the kinds of delays modern automation is designed to eliminate. According to StrongDM, the average new hire must complete an average of 54 onboarding tasks.
Yet Gallup reports that only 12% of U.S. employees feel their company does a good job of onboarding – leading to disjointed experiences and lost time. In contrast, 70% of employees who had exceptional onboarding experiences say they have “the best possible job.”
How Teal Can Help Optimize the Onboarding Process
With Teal’s automation bots, tasks that can take hours – like account setup, device provisioning, and permission assignments – can now be completed in minutes. This not only accelerates time-to-productivity but also improves employee satisfaction.
Because, according to Gallup, employees with strong onboarding experiences are 2.6 times more likely to be extremely satisfied with their workplace and far more likely to stay.
3. You’re Facing Growth Limits Due to Labor or Complexity Constraints
Your Sign
You want to grow, but you’re hitting a wall. Not because of lack of demand, but because your team is stretched thin, your processes are too manual, or your systems are too fragmented.
Your Opportunity to Automate
According to Okta’s 2024 SMBs at Work report, the average small-to-midsize business now deploys 58 different applications – a number that’s grown significantly year over year.
With stacks this complex, automation is necessary. AI systems dramatically reduce the time between decision and execution, enabling lean teams to work smarter, move faster, and deliver enterprise-level outcomes without the overhead.
And that speed matters.
According to NFIB, a Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, 56% of SMBs were hiring in April 2025, yet 47% of them reported few or no qualified applicants.
In an environment where growth is directly constrained by limited talent and operational inefficiencies, automation is a lifeline.
How Teal Can Help Maximize Your Team’s Potential
We can help you break through growth barriers by automating tasks that slow your team down. Our automation-first approach offloads the operational burden, giving your team the capacity to focus on high-value work, strategic initiatives, and growth opportunities.
So, you get more out of the talent you already have – without burning them out or adding headcount.
4. You’re Struggling to Scale Without Adding Headcount
Your Sign
Your business is growing, but your ability to scale operations can’t keep up because hiring more people isn’t sustainable.
You’re already stretching your existing team thin, and every new workflow, customer, or compliance requirement adds more weight. Leaving you navigating burnt-out employees, bottlenecks, and missed opportunities.
Your Opportunity to Automate
Pax8’s report shows that SMBs are increasingly becoming “AI-built.” In other words, using automation to scale operations without scaling payroll. In fact, AI adoption among SMBs nearly doubled over an 18-month period, jumping from 26.4% in 2023 to 50.92% by 2024.
By leaning on AI-driven tools and digital workflows, modern businesses are doing much more with even less than before.
How Teal Can Help You Scale Without Adding More Staff
With Teal’s automation as a service, you can extend your team’s capacity with digital labor that works 24/7, doesn’t burn out, and scales instantly. From automatically provisioning new accounts to triaging tickets, we can help your existing team deliver more, faster and with greater consistency. You get scale without the stress.
5. You Know You Need to Innovate
Your Sign
You’re aware of how AI and automation will benefit your organization, but are unsure how to apply them to your business.
Your Opportunity to Automate
That’s where Teal comes in. As a Managed Intelligence Provider, we don’t just deploy automation solutions. We help you reimagine your workflows, identify high-impact automation opportunities, and guide you through the transformation.
You Might Already Be Behind the Automation Curve
A Salesforce survey found that 75% of SMBs are already experimenting with AI, and that number jumps to 83% among high-growth businesses. Additionally, adoption is accelerating fastest in traditional industries like healthcare, insurance, and manufacturing, where smaller firms are using generative AI for practical use cases.
So, if you haven’t started exploring automation, there’s a good chance your competitors already have. And with the speed at which AI accelerates operations, the gap is widening faster than ever.
The Time to Act Is Now
The next era of business won’t be built by the biggest companies. It will be built by the boldest. SMBs that embrace automation today will quickly outpace competitors tomorrow. If any of these signs sound familiar, your business is ready.
Let Teal help you take the first step.
Contact us today for managed intelligence services that prepare your organization for an AI or automation readiness assessment. Whether it’s an AI agent, an AI service desk, or a full automation roadmap, we’re here to help you scale smarter.
