FULL DISCLOSURE: Ville is a friend and business partner of mine, and I’ve known him as long as I’ve lived here in Eastern Finland, which is to say for over fifteen years.
I’ve been assisting Ville’s company, Mindhive, with launching two key offerings: a series of AI training sessions and their new virtual AI assistant product called Mainio.
As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, I share Ville’s view on the urgency for companies and organisations in this region, and beyond, to engage AI tools and become familiar with them in order to prepare for the future.
See also:
- Ville Venäläinen’s 5 recommendations to prepare for a future with AI | Cluetail / Jos Schuurmans
- Now is the time to start riding the AI wave | Cluetail / Jos Schuurmans
What I’m attempting here is not as much a plug for Mindhive’s products as it is a genuine exploration of how to connect entrepreneurs, business people and public-sector executives to that need and urgency to engage with AI.
Learn and dare
In a campaign earlier this summer, we promoted Mindhive’s AI training as an opportunity for people to learn about what AI is and to learn to dare to use it.
In hindsight, I believe the challenge with that approach is that it does not immediately communicate the material benefit for people who participate in the training.
Instead of leading with “learn and dare,” we’ve been thinking about highlighting specific AI use cases that are common to, for example, SME entrepreneurs.
But there are many, many use cases, and each entrepreneur’s situation is different. It’s hard to identify just one, two, or three of the most generic use cases.
Recently, I started experimenting with AI myself. I’m trying to integrate conversations with Bud, my ChatGPT account, into my workflow wherever it seems to make sense.
I put together most of the paragraphs of this blog post by talking with Bud through the ChatGPT app on my Android phone. So far, it’s been an amazing app for dictation. It hardly makes any mistakes in speech-to-text. And because it really is a conversation, any mistakes can be corrected immediately.
That’s actually a topic for another day.
Set up that AI buddy
Bud thinks that improving customer service, streamlining operations, and enhancing marketing efforts are three of the most common broad categories of use cases for many SMEs.
We could unpack those separately as well.
However, rather than looking for specific use cases or even those three categories that Bud mentioned, I would perhaps argue that the main benefit of the training is for people to learn to do exactly what I’m trying: to set up an AI tool as a virtual assistant that you can spar with, who can give you advice, and even help you be more creative, productive, and efficient. Content creation is just one example of that.
Unsurprisingly, Bud agrees, saying that an AI virtual assistant can provide immediate support, help with decision-making, and offer a sounding board when there’s no one else available.
Bud mentions instant access to information, support for decision-making, and assistance with repetitive tasks as benefits.
Time and cost savings
How much time could a business person or knowledge worker save on tasks like scheduling, research, or content creation?
According to statistics collected by Vena, a US-based planning platform provider that leverages AI:
- 73% of companies waste time on manual and error-prone tasks, such as data entry and validation, for their planning and budgeting processes, that AI can automate.
- Staff using AI report an 80% improvement in productivity due to the technology.
- Customer service support agents handled 13.8% more customer inquiries per hour, business professionals could write 59% more work-related documents per hour, and programmers could code 126% more projects each week.
- Significant benefits of implementing AI tools are greatest among less experienced and lower-skill workers, who experienced a 35% improvement.
- Three out of five business owners predict that AI implementation will drive sales growth.
- Sales pros indicate that 18% of them use generative AI to create content, 16% use it for prospect outreach, 16% conduct research with it, and 14% rely on it for data analysis and reporting.
- By automating manual tasks with AI, sales pros are able to save two hours and 15 minutes a day — 78% agree that it helps them dedicate more time to the most critical aspects of their role.
- 53% of marketers believe GenAI is a “game-changer” because it alters the ways they can analyse data, personalise content, build marketing campaigns, and optimise SEO strategy.
Whence the hesitation?
Getting started seems simple enough. Just download the app and get going. And yet, something seems to be holding people back.
Says Bud: “Many people might feel overwhelmed by the technology, unsure how to integrate it into their daily routines, or worry about the learning curve.”
In summary, while it’s true that there’s a need and an urgency for all of us to learn about AI in order to be prepared for the future, and that through this AI training you can learn where to start and learn to dare to start, the main concrete benefit is that you will learn and dare to set up one concrete specific AI tool that will, from now on, be your virtual assistant, your partner, your buddy, and that will help you with everything at work that you want it to help you with.
While understanding AI is crucial, the real value of the training is in learning to set up and use a virtual assistant that can become a valuable, everyday partner in your work.
Are you ready to take the first step toward integrating AI into your daily workflow?