7 AI Tools to Optimize Your Business

Did you know? Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for decades. We’ve all been using it for quite some time, long before we heard of ChatGPT. The potential for use is massive across industries. When done well, AI-powered automation saves time and money while streamlining workflows and improving customer experiences. But it’s still in its infancy, and there aren’t any rules yet.

Welcome to the Wild Wild West of AI

Image generated by Open AI ChatGPT 4.0 DALL·E 3

At the end of the day, AI is a broad field of technologies that allow computers to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence. AI uses algorithms, data, and computational power to simulate human intelligence, allowing machines to learn, recognize patterns, solve problems, and make decisions. Sometimes, AI can be wrong, and there are some legal and ethical gray areas that come with using it. AI is in the “Wild Wild West” of technology innovation and development. We’re in unchartered territory, and it’s advancing rapidly, opening up new possibilities and challenges yet to be fully understood or regulated.

Trends in AI … Giddy Up!

76% of consumers are concerned about misinformation from AI [Forbes Advisor Survey]
Over 60% of business owners believe AI will improve customer relationships [Forbes Advisor Survey]
64% of businesses expect AI to increase productivity [Forbes Advisor Survey]
AI market size is expected to reach $407 billion by 2027 [Markets and Markets]
AI will have an estimated 21% net increase on the United States GDP by 2030 [Statista]

7 Game-Changing AI Tools to Optimize Your Business

Automated Scheduling

Whatever business you’re in, automated scheduling is a win-win. You can save time while managing your time. This isn’t a new thing, but we still see lots of businesses doing this manually. There are several well-known scheduling platforms out there, all with slightly different benefits to fit your unique business needs. Key features vary, including calendar sharing, automated meeting reminders, easy rescheduling options, secure online transactions, and integration with tools like Google Calendar, Office 365, customer service platforms and messaging.

Acuity helps manage appointments, calendar sharing, and integrates well with other platforms. It also provides customizable forms and payment processing. It’s best for service-based businesses needing detailed appointment management.
Calendly is known for its ease of use and seamless integration with other business tools. It includes automated calendar sync, easy booking link sharing, and integration with tools like Google Calendar and Office 365.
Clara is a virtual assistant that automates meeting scheduling and handles follow-up emails. Key features include AI meeting scheduling and email thread management.

2. Project Management

Have a million details floating around in your brain late at night as you fall asleep? Monkey mind? ADD? Dumping those details into your project management platform works wonders for your headspace. Efficient project management is crucial for the success of any business, and leveraging the right tools can significantly save time and improve productivity. These task management tools outlined below include project templates, workflow automations, goal tracking, and advanced reporting dashboards.

Asana excels in task management and project tracking, making it ideal for large teams and enterprises. It integrates with over 200 other apps and provides detailed automation and reporting features. At Elev8, we don’t remember how we survived without it!
ClickUp offers a versatile and customizable platform with features suitable for both small and large teams. It supports multiple methodologies and includes extensive integrations.
Monday.com is user-friendly and highly customizable. It’s ideal for small businesses that are new to project management software. It offers a broad spectrum of features for workflow automation and team collaboration.
Trello is for teams that prefer visuals. It uses a Kanban board approach, making it simple and intuitive for managing tasks and projects.

3. Meeting Notes

Meetings can be one of the biggest time sucks of all if not properly managed with action items, key roles, assigned responsibilities and follow-up. AI can save time by automatically generating meeting summaries and key takeaways of vital talking points and decisions so you can quickly identify action items and never miss a follow-up again. AI-generated meeting notes capture and highlight crucial decisions, tasks, and actions. Features include automated transcription in multiple languages, meeting summaries, and integration with various apps.

Fireflies can integrate with popular video conferencing and cloud storage platforms and can also be connected to other applications via its API.
Duet AI for Google Workspace helps improve audio and visual quality for remote meeting participants, generates translated captions in 18 languages, takes notes and summarizes meetings, and can even attend meetings on your behalf.
Avoma is great for detailed conversation analytics. It includes a range of coaching tools, including AI scoring, so you can help new sales reps get up to speed and start closing more deals.

4. Procedures, Statements of Work & Training Manuals

If you’ve ever manually drafted workflows, statements of work, instructions, and/or task notes, these tools below can cut the time in half! Creating processes and implementing detailed training is crucial to scaling your business with a well-educated team.

Scribe is an excellent tool for creating automatic how-to guides and training manuals. Users can capture any process step-by-step, automatically generating comprehensive guides. This tool is particularly useful for creating standard operating procedures (SOPs) and training documentation with minimal manual effort. It also supports customization and easy sharing options, making it a versatile choice for various documentation needs.
Trainual is designed to streamline employee onboarding and training with pre-built templates for various business processes, such as sales handbooks and hiring checklists. It offers a user-friendly interface that allows businesses to document their processes and create training manuals efficiently. The platform supports customization, making it easy to adapt the content to specific organizational needs.
TechSmith Snagit is a robust tool for creating training documentation. It features screen capture with markup, video tutorials, and the ability to create GIFs if that’s your thing.

5. Grammar, Spelling, and Proofing

Want to make sure all of your content is on point with spelling and grammar? These tools help with just that. In addition to proofing, spelling and grammar checks, you can set the style, tone, and rewrite for clarity.

Grammarly does everything from spell check to editing to proofing grammar. It also features a plagiarism tool, ensuring you’re only working with original content.
Wordtune is great for rewriting, shortening, and expanding content. It includes a feature for adding analogies, counterarguments, and facts.
ProWritingAid is geared for informative evaluation reports.

6. Headshots

The jury is out on AI generated headshots. There’s a lot of room for improvement in this category. For the most part, these platforms don’t generate quality images unless you provide good images of yourself. And if you have good images of yourself, you probably don’t need AI-generated headshots! Remember, AI is not a magician. When done poorly, the images will come out too 3D ish or fake looking, so be careful. Most AI headshot-generating platforms don’t offer a free trial, and the cost can be more than doing a photoshoot with a professional photographer.

BetterPic is an AI headshot generator that turns your selfies into professional headshots.
HeadshotPro offers users a variety of styles and backgrounds to choose from. It also integrates privacy policies to ensure user data is secure and photos are not reused.
ProPhotos AI includes extensive customization, including different outfits, poses, and backgrounds. It’s also one of the fastest AI headshot generation services, delivering images in as little as 30 minutes.
Secta AI requires users to upload at least 25 photos and provides over 300 headshots in different styles and settings.

7. AI Chatbots

At your command, AI chatbots can draft a report, write Excel formulas, write code, generate content, compose emails or replies, generate images, and more. With new platforms, updates and features coming out regularly, it’s a lot to keep up with.

Key considerations:

Using AI platforms for research is only as good as the data it searches. Large language models power generative AI platforms. They use algorithms of extremely large datasets to “understand” and generate text. The accuracy of the data depends on the reliability of the sources it fetches information from.

AI chatbots are only as good as the person using them. It still requires the human element to dissect and review that information for accuracy. While we’re on the topic, the same goes for Google and any other search platform. As the “pay-to-play model” has steadily increased over the years, results are based on popularity, not credibility or reliability. Search results are influenced by sponsored and page-ranked results, making it difficult for the average user to determine which sources are reliable. This is why market research and content generation from a credible company is so important.

When more pay-to-play sites are listed first, more AI platforms are out there summarizing nonsense, and more uneducated people are blindly regurgitating that nonsense without dissecting it first. We could quickly end up with a very watered-down worldwide web. This has a far-reaching impact on anything it touches, which is just about everything in the digital content space.

It’s also important to know that some platforms go back a few years in data, and some are more current. Regardless of the time stamp, it’s important to remember that the accuracy of the data depends on the reliability of the sources it fetches information from.

For the vast number of AI summaries now popping up on search, many are not accurate. If a user finds an inaccurate AI summary convincing, then they don’t understand the topic, and if they don’t understand it, they shouldn’t be writing about it.

With that being said, done well, these platforms can be just that, effective tools. Keeping up with all the latest and greatest can get confusing. Microsoft added GPT-4 to Bing Chat and renamed it Copilot, OpenAI added new features to ChatGPT and released GPT-4o, and Google rebranded its chatbot from Bard to Gemini.

ChatGPT by OpenAI: Most people have heard of ChatGPT. It’s an advanced AI language model that can assist with content creation, customer service, and a whole lot more. The latest version, ChatGPT-4o, is a multimodal model, meaning it can process and generate both language and images as opposed to being limited to only language.
Google Gemini: Google’s Gemini, formerly known as Bard, is considered a main rival to ChatGPT. Gemini can produce multiple responses to queries you pose to it, whereas ChatGPT produces one per query. Gemini has always been able to access the Internet in real time, whereas ChatGPT recently acquired this function and it’s not available on the free version.
Microsoft Copilot: Formerly known as Bing Chat, Copilot is built on OpenAI’s technology but is specifically tailored for code generation and assistance in programming tasks.

Staying Competitive In Today's Landscape

Incorporating AI and automation into your business model is a necessity for staying competitive in today’s fast-paced market. By implementing the right strategies, you can streamline processes, enhance customer experiences, and make data-driven decisions that propel your business forward. Continuous learning and adaptation are essential. The future of business is here, and those who leverage these tools effectively and ethically will lead the way.

Elev8 Your Business with AI: Transform the Way You Work

At Elev8 Consulting Group, we specialize in helping businesses harness the power of AI and automation platforms to optimize operations, boost productivity, and drive growth. We guide you through the entire process, from strategy development, product selection, training and implementation. Is your business ready to take the leap? Get in touch to learn more!