We all know the grind—endless administrative tasks, data sorting, and minor to-dos that slowly pile up, robbing hours from your week. You’re working hard, but are you working efficiently? I see many businesses in this situation. The question I’m asked more and more every day now is: How can AI help us become more efficient without sacrificing quality? In short – they want to get more done!
In today’s post, we’ll explore how AI has emerged as a powerful tool to streamline processes, saving your team precious time and boosting productivity without adding extra costs. Sound too good to be true? Let’s get into the details of how AI can help.
The Time-Sink Tasks We Often Overlook
Start with a simple question: What is a small task you regularly perform that takes 30-45 minutes?
You might think 30 minutes isn’t much, but consider how often you repeat this task every week. Maybe you’re spending half an hour here or there collecting or sorting data, sorting files, or responding to routine emails. It adds up. Over a week, that could be a few hours—over a year, it’s dozens of workdays lost to simple, repetitive tasks.
Historically, automation has been a go-to solution for saving time, allowing us to shift focus to more impactful tasks. The problem? Automation is usually tied to the platform you’re using, and the more customisable you want it, the more expensive it gets. As I mentioned in a previous post, “Automation offers a potential solution, but it also comes with trade-offs: less automation means more time spent, while more automation can quickly increase costs.”
So, where does AI fit into this? Unlike traditional automation, AI offers optimisation without locking you into rigid, expensive systems. Instead of fully automating a process, AI optimises it by handling tasks much faster—often reducing time spent by 80-90%—while still leaving room for human involvement. This way, you get the best of both worlds: speed and flexibility without the hefty price tag.
For example, I recently worked with a client who was wrestling with a large data sorting and reporting problem. The issue of time was holding her back from the next phase of a customer outreach campaign. By leveraging her existing ChatGPT Plus account, we built a custom GPT tool in under an hour that cut her workload down to just a few minutes—saving her nearly 50 hours of manual work. Looking at that in financial terms, it was a bit over $2500 off the bottom line. This process needs to be run every quarter, so that’s an annual saving of $10,000, bottom line, for around 1 hours initial work.
And all this happened without needing to invest in an expensive new system.
Onto another challenge faced by many businesses, delegating tasks.
The Trust Dilemma: Letting Go Without Losing Control
The second question I always ask is: What’s a small task you’d love to offload, but don’t trust anyone with?
This is where things get interesting. You might want to delegate, but you worry about the quality or precision required for certain jobs. Perhaps it’s managing sensitive data or handling customer complaints—tasks that need accuracy and care.
In the context of AI, this is where optimisation becomes very valuable. Rather than fully automating a task and potentially losing the nuance or control, AI optimisation allows for human oversight while dramatically speeding up the process. AI tools can sift through data, generate reports, or handle customer inquiries much faster than we can, but the human element remains essential, ensuring quality and spontaneity.
That said, I understand concerns about using sensitive data with AI tools like ChatGPT. A simple solution I recommend to my clients is data anonymisation. Many CRMs allow the use of custom fields, which are user-created tags that can be applied to any data record. I suggest creating a custom number field called “GPT Number.” You can apply this to customer records, contacts, projects, or financial datasets. When using data with ChatGPT, instead of using the customer or contact name, you can reference the GPT Number, which helps anonymise the data while still allowing you to optimise processes.
The beauty of AI optimisation is that it gives you the efficiency boost you’re looking for while maintaining the flexibility and care that automation alone often lacks. You’re not removing yourself from the process—you’re just making it faster and more efficient, without losing the human touch that makes your work special.
How AI Can Streamline Your Workflow
So, where do you start? AI offers the freedom to optimise your workflow in a way that’s flexible and adaptable to your needs. Here are a few examples of how AI can turbo boost your efficiency:
- Process Optimisation: Tools like AI-driven data processing or report generation can quickly sort through large datasets, according to your specific instructions. This reduces the time you spend on manual analysis, but without removing you from the equation entirely. This keeps the process optimised, while you can still add your expertise where needed.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): AI optimises responses to internal and external queries this by offering a more tailored, conversational approach. These tools speed up the routine interactions, but still allow you to step in when necessary for more complex issues.
- Data Sorting with Machine Learning: Sorting through data and identifying patterns no longer needs to be a manual process. AI tools can optimise this task, cutting down hours of work into minutes. And because you’re still in the loop, the insights are there for you to interpret and apply creatively.
By using AI to optimise these processes, you don’t have to worry about giving up control or losing the human touch. It’s about making your work faster and more efficient, so you can focus on the tasks that matter most.
Getting more done with AI Can Free You to Focus on What Matters
If you’re spending valuable time on tasks that AI could help optimise, you’re missing an opportunity to improve productivity and efficiency. By using AI to streamline repetitive work, you’ll gain time, while still maintaining control over the process. The future is pointing toward a blend of automation and optimisation, where AI works in the background, handling tasks faster but leaving room for human creativity and oversight.
Start by asking yourself the two questions we discussed today.
- What is a small task you regularly perform that takes 30-45 minutes?
- What’s a small task you’d love to offload, but don’t trust anyone with?
Remember, the KISS principle. Don’t try to change the world, just save yourself 1 hour a day to start!
Next, explore how AI can be integrated into your workflow, not as a replacement but as an enhancement. The key to boosting efficiency isn’t about adding more hours to the day—it’s about working smarter, with AI as a tool that optimises, not automates, your way of doing things.
Cheers.
Adam Walsh,
Founder – Bizualize
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