How AI can maximise your startup programme’s efficiency
AI tools and solutions are rapidly evolving across all sorts of industries. Utilising the right ones can streamline your team’s operations, improving efficiency across a range of disciplines.
Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered automation is everywhere. What was once a niche product within the tech development space has now become a staple of modern workflows and content creation.
While all of this new potential is exciting, understanding how to best use automation is a skill in itself. Recognising where to utilise AI solutions and – perhaps more importantly – where not to rely on them can often be the key to success.
We’ve put together a list of the key areas to consider when adopting AI into your team’s workflows, from creative output to time management and more. Utilising AI as part of your programme or team’s processes takes time, care and consideration, and knowing your intentions from the outset can make all the difference.
Speed up everyday administrative tasks
In a larger team, there can be a lot of administrative tasks that get in the way of creative, long-term goals.
Timesheets, budget planning, project management and much more can take hours or even days from your working week, leaving you less time to focus on actual projects you’re passionate about. This is where automation and AI can come into their own.
For example, management platforms like Trevor, Katch and Motion enable users to access all the information they need in one place, providing baked-in AI tools that offer suggestions, changes and minor tweaks to better optimise your time and planning.
Many offer personal AI ‘assistants’ that work much the same way as Siri too, adapting to your behaviours and changing their recommendations accordingly.
Adopting tools like these can help to lighten the load of administrative and repetitive tasks, maximising your time management and ultimately streamlining your startup’s workflows.
Speed up onboarding of new staff or clients
Onboarding new staff or prospective clients can be laborious at the best of times, especially if you’re delivering a very nuanced, specific service requiring hefty amounts of information.
Automated solutions can be used to quicken up the process of hiring and onboarding. While you may not have the administrative authority to alter your organisation’s entire hiring process from the top down, you can use tools to better streamline your own practices on an individual basis.
For example, AI solutions could be used to automatically scan CV applications for relevant work experience and filter candidates based on their strengths and weaknesses. This would cut back the human resources required throughout the hiring process significantly.
AI can also analyse employee or client information, allowing the transition into your team or programme to become much smoother with minimal effort. Automated solutions can consider details such as:
Knowledge gaps
General skills
Temperament and individual attitudes
Personal preferences
A dataset can then tailor any new onboarding experiences based on these references.
If you were hiring a new employee with a learning disability, AI could match some of their specific pain points and hurdles to others with similar traits on your team. Their onboarding could then be altered to better suit them specifically, all without any human intervention.
You could also incorporate AI tools into the onboarding process with chatbots, automated paperwork, and regular check-ins to collect data, among other things.
Consider what tasks your team engages with specifically and use this information to inform which AI solutions you should opt for.
Draft ideas quickly and assess brands
Automated content and procedurally generated design work can be very useful when drafting ideas and assessing whether a brand or collaboration could be feasible with your programme.
It is now possible to quickly and efficiently create simple concepts and proposals without spending weeks at a time on individual projects, or resorting to generic stock imagery to compliment your ideas.
You need to be smart about how automation is implemented into this creative process, of course, but you can seriously cut down time with tools like Midjourney, DALL-E, and even Adobe Photoshop’s built-in AI image extender tools. Many of these solutions are free or part of a wider software package that you may already be using.
Explore the possibilities of the tools that are available to you immediately before investing in new programmes or software that your team will likely be unfamiliar with; many platforms come with AI built in. Check if this is the case for your workflows.
AI can also be used to analyse brands and determine whether they’re viable as a potential partner or collaborator.
Platforms that incorporate automation can collect and review conversation and language surrounding brands from various online sources, for example, and inform your marketing strategy.
Automation can also help to assist with overall brand management, research outreach and communication. It can’t do these things without human oversight and intervention – but can help to enrich your understanding of other brands as well as your own.
Understand the limits of AI
With all the industry chatter and buzz around AI right now, it’s easy to get swept up in the possibilities that these new tools can offer.
Most big companies are eager to jump onto the automation bandwagon and provide AI solutions wherever possible, but this doesn’t mean every tool is useful or necessary.
We’re still in the very early stages of AI adoption, both in terms of its potential and our expectations. Depending on who you ask, automated solutions are either the downfall or saving grace of modern workflows, and you rarely hear opinions that lie somewhere in between.
In truth, most AI has very clear limits, and won’t necessarily be the holy grail solution to your company’s problems. This is especially true if you’re using automated software to produce creative material, such as copy or graphic design.
It’s almost always obvious when a company is using AI for its client-facing marketing strategy. Customers can still point out AI-generated images a mile off, and you risk cheapening your brand and damaging consumer trust if you lean into this too heavily.
However, when AI is incorporated correctly and thoughtfully, it can go a long way in improving different areas of your business, both in terms of creative possibilities and overall efficiency. Understanding AI and how to appropriately use it in this way will help realise its full potential.
At Inkwell, we create compelling content that connects organisations with startups and small businesses. Get in touch with our team for more details on how we can help your programme or initiative reach more entrepreneurs.
