The Current State of AI

LLMs have revolutionized the business tools we use. They continue to train on larger datasets, making AI-powered tools smarter and faster. Their abilities make repetitive tasks such as data analytics, content creation, and customer service more accessible and streamlined.

For all its benefits, it’s not a cure-all for business woes. It can’t replace every role, only reduce friction in certain areas. For example, try to determine which parts of the list below were AI-assisted and which parts a human wrote. This introduction has been entirely human, for a reference point.

You’ll notice that AI language tends to feel a little lifeless. While it’s good at analyzing and presenting information quickly, it often lacks perspective, depth, and personality. Similarly, it can be highly effective at analyzing data, translating, and a number of other tasks, but it still lacks nuance and is often very flawed.

We’ve highlighted nine AI tools for businesses below, to help you move faster in business.

1. ChatGPT

The most popular AI for productivity and decision-making is ChatGPT. It serves as an assistant that can enhance productivity by generating ideas, drafting content, and offering insights. It can help create engaging content like emails, reports, and social media posts. This makes communication easier and keeps messages consistent. However, AI-generated content should always be proofread and personalized.

One of the best ways to use ChatGPT as a leadership tool is for brainstorming. With the right prompts, it can help teams discover innovative solutions and business growth strategies. It can also analyze complex information and provide actionable insights, aiding decision-making processes. ChatGPT can optimize various facets of business operations, from helping formulate business goals to writing blog post drafts.

2. IBM Watson

IBM Watson offers AI-driven analytics, natural language processing, and other business automation tools. These help businesses understand large amounts of data. Its analytics tools help companies gain insights from unstructured data sources. These sources include social media, customer reviews, and internal documents, allowing more informed decision-making.

Watson can use natural language processing to automate customer support, like chatbots. It can also interpret customer feedback and predict market trends based on language patterns. Additionally, its automation features streamline business processes by automating routine tasks such as coding and content creation.

3. Salesforce Einstein

Salesforce Einstein integrates AI into the Salesforce CRM tool to boost productivity in sales, customer service, and marketing. It offers predictive analytics, which helps businesses anticipate customer needs, find leads, and prioritize sales efforts effectively. By analyzing past interactions, Einstein can personalize customer experiences and suggest next-best actions, enhancing customer engagement and conversion rates.

By enabling more precise targeting and further personalized outreach, Salesforce Einstein helps companies improve their sales strategies. Ironically, it claims to build stronger customer relationships, despite being artificial intelligence rather than a human touch. Some situations need automation, but you should be careful when letting a robot manage human interactions.

4. Fathom AI Notetaker

Another way to increase productivity is through Fathom AI, which automates notetaking during meetings. It transcribes conversations in real-time, allowing participants to focus on the discussion without worrying about capturing every detail. Fathom AI points out important details like action items, decisions, and deadlines. This makes it easier to review and follow up on what happened in meetings.

It also integrates seamlessly with platforms like Zoom and Google Meet. This tool is useful for businesses that want to make meetings more efficient. It helps keep accurate records and ensures that nothing important is overlooked. After a meeting, it provides an entire transcript of the conversation and separates it by different speakers. Like all AIs, it is not flawless, but it still saves time when reflecting on meetings and creating meeting minutes or summaries.

5. HubSpot Smart CRM

HubSpot’s Smart CRM offers a comprehensive solution for managing sales, leads, and customer interactions. It offers real-time tracking of deals and activities through a dashboard. It automates interactions across different channels, such as email and social media.

AI-powered recommendations help guide the next steps in your sales process. The CRM also includes lead generation tools and email marketing features to grow and manage your contacts efficiently. Customer support is improved with tools like ticketing, live chat, and a universal inbox. These tools help the team members communicate easily.

6. Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is another business analytics tool that integrates with Microsoft apps. It uses AI to help organizations see data clearly. This tool helps find insights and make smart decisions. With interactive dashboards and reports, it enables business leaders to monitor key performance indicators and track progress toward goals in real-time.

AI-driven features like natural language querying allow users to ask questions about their data and receive answers in the form of visualizations, making complex data more accessible and understandable. By integrating with other Microsoft applications, it provides a unified platform for analyzing and collaborating on data.

7. Tableau with AI

Tableau, enhanced with AI capabilities, enhances data analytics for businesses through visualizations of complex data sets. Its AI-driven analytics enable users to identify trends, patterns, and outliers that might not be immediately apparent through traditional analysis. Tableau’s natural language processing allows users to engage with it in a conversation, making it easier for non-technical stakeholders to explore and interact with data. By transforming raw data into compelling visual narratives, Tableau facilitates data-driven decision-making across business functions, helping companies uncover insights that drive strategic actions and productivity.

8. Google Cloud Vertex AI

Vertex AI is a machine learning (ML) platform that allows you to train, deploy, and manage ML models and AI applications. It integrates data engineering, data science, and ML workflows to streamline team collaboration and scale projects on Google Cloud. In a nutshell, it leverages AI to help businesses train their own automated processes. Some key features include:

• AutoML: Train models for tabular, image, text, or video data without coding.
• Custom Training: Full control over training with custom code and frameworks.
• Model Garden: Discover, customize, and deploy prebuilt or open-source models.
• Generative AI: Access and fine-tune Google’s large AI models for various modalities like text, images, and speech.

After model deployment, Vertex AI offers end-to-end ML Ops tools to automate and scale the ML lifecycle on a fully managed infrastructure. The platform supports Python SDK, Jupyter notebooks, and Google Cloud tools for development and collaboration.

In the ML workflow, Vertex AI supports data preparation, model training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring. It also offers tools like Vertex AI Workbench for data visualization, custom containers for real-time predictions, and Model Monitoring for tracking performance and detecting issues.

9. Xero with AI

Xero, an accounting software with AI capabilities, simplifies financial management for business leaders by automating routine bookkeeping, expense tracking, and financial reporting tasks. Its AI features can categorize transactions, detect anomalies, and generate real-time financial statements, reducing the time spent on manual data entry and minimizing errors.

Xero’s AI also provides insights into cash flow trends and financial health, helping businesses make more informed decisions. By providing a clear, real-time view of financial performance, Xero enables business leaders to focus on strategic planning and growth, rather than being bogged down by administrative tasks.

10. Grammarly Business

Grammarly Business is an AI-powered writing assistant designed to enhance the clarity, tone, and professionalism of business communications. It helps teams craft polished emails, reports, and presentations by offering real-time suggestions for grammar, punctuation, and style. The platform also provides tone detection, ensuring that the intended message is conveyed in a way that aligns with company values and the target audience.

In addition to improving the quality of written content, Grammarly Business helps streamline collaboration by enabling team members to share documents and maintain consistent language standards across the organization. Its integration with various platforms, such as email, word processors, and project management tools, makes it valuable for businesses looking to improve communication efficiency and professionalism.