Top 10 tech tips for automation from a non-techie chemist

Automation is part of the pathway to success for every business – small or multinational. Too many entrepreneurs and small business owners are still not taking full advantage of technology that can speed up every process, save time, increase the bottom line and boost work/life balance.

At least that’s the view of non-techie chemist Aaron Lee from Oxfordshire.

Aaron, entrepreneur and founder of chemical procurement and distribution company Alchem Trading Ltd, is all in for automation: “Essentially, every technology platform and app that I use at the moment is to try to save time, organise the workflow and implement automation as much as possible.”

UK Government data shows the most commonly adopted AI and automation solutions include:

Data analysis and management (9 per cent).
Machine learning (7 per cent).
AI hardware (5 per cent).
Computer vision and image generation and processing (5 per cent).

So far, telecoms and IT has the highest rate of AI adoption (29.5 per cent), followed by the legal sector at 29.2 per cent. The lowest adoption is within hospitality, health and retail at around 11.5 per cent.

A report from PwC UK suggests that automation will likely impact up to 30 per cent of UK jobs over the next decade. Wherever your business stands on automation right now, it’s useful to understand the tech options available.

Aaron has put together his top ten tech recommendations for automation below.

lemlist – cold email outreach tool. Promising cold emails that actually get results, lemlist builds your lead list with verified emails. Aaron said: “I use it for automated outreach, personalisation at scale and tracking engagement. For example, when someone completes a survey on ScoreApp, I can add them to a specific email campaign based on their results.”
Fyxer.ai – email organisation using AI. Aaron said: “Emails are automatically read and labelled. Where a reply is needed, it will automatically generate a response (or two if I could respond positively or negatively). It also drafts chasers after around five days to remind me of things I need to follow up on. Overall, Fyxer saves me a lot of time.”
Motion – calendar organisation using AI. Motion uses AI to plan your work automatically. Aaron said: “Motion integrates with my calendar and helps me schedule and manage my time automatically.”
Squarespace – website building and hosting. “This isn’t so much software as a tool on Squarespace that automates tasks for me,” said Aaron. “I use a supplier capture form that allows suppliers to essentially self categorise, which populates a Google Drive file of data.”
Hypefury – automated social media scheduler. Aaron said: “This is a great tool to schedule posts on LinkedIn and X (it does Instagram too).”
Trumpet – digital sales room and customer onboarding software. Trumpet streamlines customers and clients, making it simpler for them to buy. Aaron said: “This sales platform allows me to generate bespoke dashboards for each client, to give each a kind of unique experience. A central hub collates all documentation, notes and files, which saves confusion when there are multiple stakeholders. There’s also a comments section, audio and video files and pretty much everything you need.”
Vidyard – video tools for virtual sales and marketing teams. Aaron said: “This is a useful piece of software for video outreach generation.”
Opus Clip – video repurposing using AI. Another AI tool, this repurposes long videos into shorts via just a single click. Aaron said: “Really useful to quickly split long videos into YouTube ready shorts.”
Beautiful.AI – presentation software using AI. HP’s choice of presentation software for ‘superpowered PCs’. Aaron said: “Perfect to help design truly slick and smart presentations quickly.”
ScoreApp – quiz funnel marketing tool. Aaron said: “This is designed to help companies assess where they are strong/weak within their supply chain. It generates personalised results into a handy PDF with tips on how to strengthen their supply chain in one of three areas.”