Nicola here, CEO at PowerApps911, sharing my honest thoughts on AI – I'm both thrilled and a little terrified. If you're leading an organization, a department, a team, or working in product development, you've likely been thinking about AI and its potential to boost productivity or enhance your product/service. I know I have.
Initially, I felt like many of you – a bit hesitant but happy to use ChatGPT for things like content improvements, brainstorming games for team meetings, or drafting PTO flyers for school. This was easy to jump into since I spend around 14 hours a day with Shane, who brings up something AI-related at least once an hour 😊. I loved the productivity boost, especially since ChatGPT helped in areas that aren’t my strong suit, but I still didn’t quite grasp the game-changing potential.
Then, the team working on our AI services asked us to brainstorm problems and inefficiencies in our organization that we’d love to solve. I was hesitant at first, still unclear on AI’s unique capabilities. I even asked, “How is this different from the solutions we already build with the Power Platform?” Their answer? AI doesn’t just follow instructions – it can interpret data and provide insights. Unlike standard automation, AI can think critically about the data it processes and give meaningful answers. And then… the wheels really started turning.
I began thinking about areas of our business I’d love to make more efficient to better serve our clients and create a better work environment for our team. Some ideas were:
Creating a solution to simplify time entry. We’re a time and materials-based consulting company, and as much as we might wish to avoid timesheets, they’re essential. Making that process easier for our team would be fantastic! We have a lot of meetings; maybe AI could look at calendars and suggest (or even prepopulate!) time entries based on meeting data. It could analyze historical patterns and recommend or prepopulate entries, streamlining the whole process.
Improving the resource shuffle. If you manage resources like we do, you know the challenges of adjusting as projects delay, new projects arise, or skill needs change. We have a solid resource management tool and a team of skilled project managers juggling resources constantly. But what if AI could make it just a bit easier? Imagine AI recommending resource shifts that optimize skills and availability or suggesting allocations based on our project pipeline.
Before this brainstorming, we were working on an internal project to make it easier to identify completed projects similar to new opportunities. In many organizations, this information is stuck in people’s heads. Someone asks, “Have you ever done a project that uses XYZ?” and we rely on team memory, sometimes asking everyone to find an answer. We tried solving this by tagging documents with skill and technology information and short project descriptions, but with a backlog of projects dating back to 2018, it was slow going. Then Daniel LeMay, one of our AI experts, stepped in and suggested AI could solve it faster and better. Now, he’s working on a solution to analyze all our past project content and automatically tag new ones as they’re completed.
These are just a few examples. Once I fully grasped the possibilities, I quickly came up with ten ideas. If you're like me and need a quick discussion with someone to understand AI and its potential, contact us. We’re excited about what AI can do, and we’d love to brainstorm with you.
If you decide to move forward with AI, we offer AI Services and Training – we can build for you or teach you to build. We’re here to be the partner you need.
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