With the increasing sophistication of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and generative AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Microsoft's Copilot, many professionals wonder how their jobs will change in the future or even if their jobs will exist at all. Other professionals face a more immediate challenge – they are overwhelmed with the volume and complexity of the tasks they need to complete.
It would seem that this latest generation of AI tools could address this onslaught of work, and many executives expect this to be true. But we are not there yet! A recent study commissioned by Upwork found that more than three-fourths of those surveyed from the US, UK, Australia, and Canada felt that AI had “decreased their productivity and added to their workload.” (italics ours)
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Whether the end goal is to increase profits or to minimize expenses, employees are increasingly expected to do ever more with ever less. Generative AI is not the only answer. There are other ways to use automation to bridge this gap. Many experienced professionals could work smarter by taking full advantage of the tools they already use every day.
Use Automation Tools Built into Common Apps
Microsoft Outlook is one of the most popular email, contact, and task management software tools available on the market today. It has quite a few tools to help you take routine tasks off your plate.
You can use Quick Actions to quickly make changes to your incoming emails. Whether it’s to snooze an email for later review or to create a task to control for the completion of an emailed request. These tools aren’t only in Outlook, if you use Google Workspace, Gmail also includes Hover Actions that allow you to pick the “low hanging automation fruit.”
Outlook includes another tool called Quick Steps that consolidates many routine tasks into a single button. For example, you could quickly forward an incoming email to your team, create a task to follow up in a week, and file the email all with click of a single preconfigured button.
If you routinely receive other emails on which you always take the same action, such as file, forward, or categorize, you can use Outlook Rules for a more hands-offs approach, no button press required. For instance, emails generated from a business system for record keeping purposes can be automatically filed unless they contain the word “error.” In Gmail, you can build similar functionality using the Filter feature.
But Outlook isn’t the only software program with this type of functionality baked right in. Look for keywords such as “integration” or “automatically” to help you identify built-in automation tools in whatever software you use the most. Sometimes, these tools are hiding in plain sight!
Here is another quick example:
Many professionals use Adobe Acrobat for document management and form creation. You can use the Adobe Action Wizard to automatically complete predefined steps in your document preparation. For example, you can set up a action that completes redaction and removes personal information.
But that’s not all, you can use Acrobat's built-in tool to automatically extract form responses and place them into an Excel file or use another tool like Excel Power Query to quickly process PDF documents that you receive on a regular basis.
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Advanced Automation with Third Party Tools
Once you have thoroughly explored the native functionality of the software you already use, you can use third party low-code or no code automation tools to take your automation even further.
If you use Microsoft Office, you are no doubt familiar with Power Automate. You can use it to automate not just Office documents but many business processes with hundreds of connectors available. But that is by no means your only option. There are other tools such as Make (formerly Integromat) and Zapier that also work with a variety of programs and sometimes even your own company's software.
Each tool has its own set of unique strengths, weaknesses, and limitations. But what all these tools have in common is that they work to automate repetitive tasks.
Document Your Internal Processes First for Maximum Impact
Before you begin using a third-party tool, if you don’t already have the target process written out as a standard operating procedure (SOP) or documented in a business process map, it is worth it to make the time investment to document your current workflow. If the process is used by a team, it helps solidify a shared truth that everyone can start from when designing the way forward. It can pay dividends in other ways. You may identify opportunities for automation or spot a bottle neck that can be resolved minor behavior changes without any technological intervention.
One caution: Avoid making major modifications to your existing process to fit the technology. The tools are there to help you and improve your experience. If you are not careful, you could accidentally create a process that is more cumbersome and time consuming for the sake of “automating” it, repeating mistake made by the companies cited in the study we mentioned at the top of this article.
Bringing the conversation full circle, one way you can use generative AI to improve your automation, is to take advantage of AI chatbots to suggest or build automation steps in your process. Both Power Automate and Zapier include tools where you can describe the action you would like to automate, and the program will create a first draft for you. This can help whenever you feel stuck or not sure how to get started.
Once you have your business process map or SOP, look for tasks that are repeatable or that can be simplified. For instance, you can create a routine that take the following steps:
When <this type of email> arrives in the inbox,
Create a task with a due date of 7 days
If the task is not complete after 4 days,
Send a reminder.
If you often send reminders/follow-ups about tasks instead of creating one automation routine that takes all four of these steps, you can create separate automation to look at all upcoming tasks and send an email for any tasks not marked as complete and are due within 3 days. This simple change will reduce the complexity of your flow and make it easier to expand or update in the future.
By using this automation to create a task, your email-based requests become trackable without increasing the workload of anyone on the team.
If a particular condition or action is not included in one automation program and you have access to multiple tools, check another one. You may need to use a combination of approaches, including built-in functionality and multiple third-party tools.
Resources for Automation Tools
This is just a brief overview of how you can use automation to increase your productivity and transform your work. Each of the tools mentioned provides free online training.
Here are some references you may want to consider:
If you prefer live training, these companies also often provide free live monthly webinars to email subscribers.
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