Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can be incredibly valuable for business owners. They can automate tasks, improve communication and decision-making, and optimize resources.

The right AI-based apps can help users become more productive both at work and in their personal lives. This article will look at seven useful AI productivity tools to boost your efficiency.
1. Automate Your Workflow

Workflow automation is an easy, efficient way to eliminate bottlenecks in your business and restore Ai-powered productivity. It helps employees focus on the more important, creative aspects of their job. It’s also a great way to increase efficiency, cut costs, and minimize human error. And, it’s much easier to implement than you might think.

The first step to workflow automation is identifying your business processes. To do this, look at each process from start to finish and determine what steps are involved. Next, figure out who is responsible for each step. Then, identify any barriers that may hinder progress, such as communication gaps or a lack of clarity in instructions. This will help you find out what areas are ripe for automation.

Once you’ve identified your processes, the next step is to create an automated workflow that reflects each one. This can be done easily using a low-code workflow platform, such as frevvo. For example, if you have an expense approval process, you can create an automated workflow with a form that asks for all necessary information before the approval can be granted. This will improve accountability, and make it easy for managers to track and approve expenses.

Once you’ve created your automated workflow, it’s important to gather feedback from users and incorporate that into your system. This will help you spot issues or improve efficiencies as your team gets used to the new system. Additionally, it’s a good idea to set up KPIs that help you measure the success of your automated workflows. This will ensure that you’re optimizing your workflows for the best results and will allow you to demonstrate the ROI of your automation project to senior managers.
2. Automate Your Tasks

Using automation tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot to shave time from emails and social media posts is one way to improve your productivity. However, you need to make sure you don’t end up over-complicating your workday with too many automated tasks.

Generally speaking, tasks that require high-order thinking are best left to humans, while routine and administrative tasks are perfect candidates for automation. For example, repetitive data entry tasks, scheduling and calendar updates, recurring meetings, reporting on support ticket performance — these are all examples of tasks that can easily be replaced with an AI-powered solution, freeing up your team’s time to spend more time on strategic tasks.

When deciding which tasks to automate, think about what’s in your ‘Zone of Genius.’ These are the activities you enjoy and are good at, as well as what contributes the most to your company’s bottom line. Ideally, your goal should be to automate or delegate all the activities outside of your Zone of Genius.

To begin, take inventory of your daily work tasks and business processes. Once you’ve done that, identify which of them can be automated with software or tools like Zapier. Then, try it out and track your results over time.

The more you automate, the better your overall productivity will be. But it’s important to start small and test your new automation system before moving on to bigger tasks or processes. This will ensure the process is working as intended and that you’re getting the desired benefits from it. Also, remember to continually optimize and update your automation systems as you learn about what’s working and what isn’t. This will keep your productivity levels high and allow you to maximize the efficiencies and ROI of your automation solutions.
3. Automate Your Communication

Whether you’re communicating with customers or employees, strong internal communications are critical to success. They build trust, enable collaboration, create alignment, and can help you manage change more effectively. Using automation to support your communication needs can save time, improve decision-making, and improve the quality of your work.

AI applications that automate your communication can be a powerful productivity tool. They can help you streamline your communication and keep up with the latest trends in customer service. They can also automate your most repetitive tasks and free up your employees for more meaningful tasks. AI-powered Task Management

In the past, customer communication was often a manual process. For example, if a customer sent an email with a request for an address change, someone on the team would need to read the message, extract all relevant information, and manually update their systems. This was a tedious task that no one wanted to do, and it took valuable agent time away from more important tasks.

AI-powered software solutions like communications mining can automate this process and save your agents time and money. These tools can take the information from a message, understand the intent of the request, and make the necessary changes. This can reduce the amount of time your agents spend on these repetitive tasks, improving their overall productivity and customer satisfaction.

As AI continues to advance, these tools will be able to read and comprehend complex customer requests. This will allow them to take on more of a support role, while still providing the human connection that customers expect.

For small businesses looking to integrate these technologies, it’s a good idea to start with quick, low-risk opportunities for automation. This will allow you to test these new tools and see how they perform before using them for more impactful projects.
4. Automate Your Decisions

As AI tools become more sophisticated, they can be used to automate more complex business decisions. This allows teams to focus on revenue-generating activities and can significantly improve productivity and reduce costs. Decision automation also reduces the chances of error, which is a common occurrence in manual processes and can lead to costly fines for regulatory or contractual violations.

For example, imagine a scenario where you’re sitting at your desk at 4pm when the phone rings. There’s a life-altering opportunity on the line – one that could skyrocket your career or bring in a ton of money. However, you also know that if you say “yes,” you’ll be stuck in a meeting until midnight. This type of unavoidable decision is the type that AI can help you automate, removing the need for willpower and allowing you to focus on what matters.

To automate a decision, your team must first codify the rules that will dictate how the decision gets made. Then, they can build a system that will analyze the results of these rules and continually fine-tune them for efficiency and accuracy. After a while, the system will learn and self-correct, eliminating any unnecessary steps or errors. Finally, they’ll identify the special cases that still need a human review.

For example, if your AR (accounts receivable) team is struggling with an inability to prioritize accounts, this can impact overall revenue. An AI solution like PMMC’s RecoveryAITM uses machine learning and automation tools to streamline the process, giving your team a clear view of what to pursue and expediting revenue recovery. This creates trickle-down benefits for the entire organization, boosting morale and maximizing productivity. Learn more about how RecoveryAITM can boost your business’ productivity by requesting a demo.
5. Automate Your Marketing

Marketing automation is one of the most obvious ways that AI can boost productivity. Automated email and content tools can automatically send personalized messages to every lead or customer at specific points in their journey with your brand. They can also automatically trigger follow-up emails based on browsing behavior, engagement actions, and onboarding milestones. And with the advent of new AI-powered content creation tools (like GPT-3), you can even automate news alerts, short social media updates, and snippets of content.

Other common AI applications include chatbots for customer support and virtual assistants that improve efficiency in many service-oriented industries. They can help reduce call wait times and route support requests to human agents, chatbots, or documentation based on the nature of the issue. They can also optimize workforce management by analyzing historical data, predicting employee performance, and optimizing scheduling to maximize productivity.