AI: Should I be Worried

If you think you can ignore it and it’ll go away then yes, you should be worried. It’s not just on its way, it’s here, it’s growing and it’s not going anywhere. If you’re savvy and use it to your advantage, you’re going to put yourself ahead of the game.

Firstly, AI is not the big scary new thing you think it is.AI has been around for a long time. Every automation you see, everything that just happens, and you don’t have to think about is AI. I think the reason it’s getting so much attention at the moment is because of Chat GPT (FYI I wrote this without the help of Chat GPT if you were curious)

I recently went to a Chat GPT workshop, and I learnt so much about how to ask it for things and get better results. It’s a really cool tool if you haven’t given it a go.

Me and my team are currently looking for more ways AI can help. More ways to automate. More ways to integrate and more ways to be even more efficient to better serve our clients. Here’s some ideas of processes you could review and look at automating or implementing a new system.

Invoicing

A huge potential for some automations within your invoicing. If you use a time tracking tool, or any other quoting/CRM type tool. Look at what integrations and automations can you set up. The functionality is most likely there and could save you heaps of time if you are manually invoicing each client. Most platforms integrate with Xero and MYOB so this would be an easy one.

CRM

This list is endless. For this you’ll want to do an analysis of what it is you need or want it to do. Each CRM has different superpowers and each business will have unique needs so make sure you do some good testing. Most CRMS will integrate with invoicing and billing tools. You’ll also ideally like it to integrate with any project management tools you’re using.

Marketing

Here it is. Chat GPT. Now, you kind of have to know how to instruct it for it to give you anything of sustenance. You’ll nee to give it some background info on your business, info on your ideal client, what platform it’s writing for, tone of voice or style and ask it to remember all the info you give it. I use it more for idea generation which saves me heaps of time. You can of course create images using AI tools similar to Chat GPT. You basically give it some instructions and it spits out an image instead of text. I haven’t played around with this yet but it’s next on my list.

Process documenting

We all know how long this takes! You can use things like Loom that will screen record what you’re doing and then you can save the video and use that. OR. You can use something like Scribe. It’ll screen record what you’re doing and then spit out a word document. I’m playing around with this just now and I think it could be better but it’s definitely saving us sometime!

Project management

Most project management tools will have some sort of automation. For example, every time a new folder is created a certain number of subfolders automatically populate with some standard data that it can pull through. We use Click Up and are playing around with the automation and what data we want as the basics, what we don’t it to populate and where we want it to save it. We chose Click Up because it integrates with all the other systems we use. So, Harvest for time tracking, Microsoft, Better Proposals all link to our Click Up and there are automations between them.

I could go on for ever! It would be worth noting that you may want to think about writing an AI policy for your business. You’ll want to make sure people are aware that they are not to utilise AI alongside confidential information e.g. using Chat GPT to write your Board report. You’ll also want to have some parameters around when using  things like Chat GPT can be used and what checks you have in place so that a human manually checks the content for brand tone, data or any facts that are generated.

AI is going to enable us and we might as well work alongside it so that we don’t get left behind. I think there’s some big changes coming in this space and they’re going to come fast. There’s heaps of information online to upskill and I’m always seeing workshops pop up.

I challenge you to go and try and automate 5 things. It’ll be worth it I promise 😊

AC

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