What would you do if you had a few extra hours every day? Would you allocate time for strategy planning instead of routine tasks? Would you finally sort through all your reports? Or maybe you could just allow yourself to work less but more efficiently?
Artificial intelligence in business already provides such an opportunity through AI tools for business productivity that can automate routine processes and boost work productivity.
A few years ago, you had to manually sort data, write down meeting notes, look for the right formulas for Excel, or spend time writing template letters. Now, all this can be delegated to AI. And what’s interesting is that many people already do it without even thinking about what’s behind it.
Have you also copied text into an AI assistant at least once to summarize a long text? Have you tested automatic selections of key ideas from a document? Or maybe you already use AI tools to extract the necessary information from hundreds of files?
AI productivity tools do not just help you “work faster.” They become personal assistants that free you from routine tasks and allow you to focus on what’s important. The main goal is to find the ones that really meet your needs.
In this article by DATAFOREST, we will look at the most effective AI tools for increasing productivity that can become your reliable assistants in work and business. As a tech vendor, we provide GenAI consultations for businesses to help identify their specific needs and use cases. If that’s something you’re looking into, feel free to schedule a call with our team for a consultation.
Who is the target audience for these tools?
Artificial intelligence has already become an integral part of the digital transformation of employee workflow in many industries. According to Statista, the top 3 industries that have already adopted Gen AI in the workplace in the US are marketing and advertising, technology, and consulting.
For example, in the financial sector, AI helps analyze markets, forecast risks, and automate accounting processes. In insurance, it speeds up claim processing and improves customer service. For e-commerce and retail, AI optimizes inventory management, creates personalized recommendations for buyers, and automates order processing. In healthcare, it helps doctors analyze diagnostic images, structure patient data, and predict disease risks while for IT companies, AI is a key tool for optimizing code, managing infrastructure, and implementing automation.
Now, let’s define which titles can benefit from implementing AI automation tools for task efficiency, time management, and business optimization.
Business leaders and managers
Directors, department heads, and entrepreneurs make dozens of decisions every day. But before making the right decision, they need to process a lot of information: financial indicators, market predictions, business analytics, and feedback from the team. AI-powered automated analytical tools help to get key insights faster, assess risks, and optimize processes.
Financial analysts and accountants
For these titles, it’s important not only to collect data but also to interpret it correctly. AI services help them quickly structure information, build forecasts, and check financial reports for accuracy. And for those who work with Excel or Google Sheets, there are separate tools that automatically generate formulas and summaries.
Marketers and content creators
Developing a strategy, writing texts, and analyzing audience engagement can all be accelerated with the help of AI. For example, trend analysis services help marketers find relevant topics faster, and content generation tools help them adapt texts to different platforms. Designers and SMM managers also use AI to create visual content and process images.
Developers and IT specialists
AI can help developers automatically write and test code, optimize development processes, and find bugs faster than humans can.
Researchers and analysts
Scientists, journalists, business analysts—anyone who works with big data—are already using AI to speed up information processing, automatically summarize articles, and find sources.
Benefits of using AI tools
Before we dive into the benefits, let’s review some recent stats. According to the PwC research, artificial intelligence has the potential to boost employee productivity by 40% by 2035.
Data analysis, writing tasks, and scheduling and calendar management are among the most common reasons why employees are using AI in the workplace.
Time Savings
AI tools can significantly reduce time spent on routine tasks. For example, a recent survey showed that among workers who used generative AI during one week, 20.5% said that AI saved them four hours or more in that week, 20.1% reported three hours, 26.4% reported saving two hours, and 33.0% reported an hour or less. Among workers who used generative AI every day, 33.5% said it saved them four hours or more, compared with 11.5% of those who used it only one day a week.
Less routine, more strategic decisions
The greatest value of AI is in automating routine processes. Imagine no longer having to manually analyze large data sets, search for the right information among hundreds of files, or deal with endless spreadsheets. AI tools take over this work, freeing time for more important tasks.
Data-driven decision-making
Previously, data analysis took time: employees had to collect information, process it, and write summaries. Now AI can do it in a few seconds. It analyzes trends, predicts outcomes, and suggests possible solutions.
Productivity without overload
The growing amount of tasks often leads to burnout. It gets difficult to write reports, respond to emails, and keep track of deadlines at the same time. AI assistants can take over these tasks, for example, summarize long documents or automatically create replies to emails.
Higher quality of work
Humans can make mistakes, and it’s normal. Forgot an important detail in a report? Missed a message from a client? AI minimizes such risks. It does not get tired, does not get distracted, and does not forget important things.
The best tools to increase productivity
Summer AI
Summer AI is a tool that integrates with blogs and websites, providing AI-generated summaries of articles for readers and product recommendations that match the content of the article. Setup takes minutes, and the tool works on both custom websites and popular platforms. It allows users to create a short summary of the content on a page or provide more context on a selected text, boosting productivity and saving time.
Pros:
- no coding skills required;
- no negative SEO impact;
- quick setup;
- increased productivity and less time spent on reading long materials;
- improved user experience.
Cons:
- summaries and product recommendations aren’t always accurate and depend on the complexity of the content.
Pricing: free plan available; Basic plan at $4/month.
Client Ratings: 4.6/5 on ProductHunt.
Recall
Recall is an AI tool designed for efficient information and knowledge management. It allows users to quickly create short summaries of any online content — from articles and blogs to YouTube videos and podcasts — and store them in a personal knowledge base. It is designed to address the challenge of information overload by transforming how users interact with and recall digital content.
Pros:
- automatic content summarization and categorization;
- offline access;
- full data ownership and reliable security.
Cons:
- poor mobile experience;
- no ability to import data from other bookmark services in JSON or Markdown formats;
Pricing: free plan includes 10 personal notes; Plus plan at $10/month.
Client Ratings: 4.0/5 on ProductHunt.
GPT Excel
GPT Excel is an AI tool that automates, simplifies, and enhances work in spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and Airtable. It lets users quickly generate formulas, SQL queries, and VBA scripts. As a result, it simplifies complex tasks, boosting productivity, automating repetitive processes, and providing deeper data insights.
Pros:
- formula generation for Excel, Google Sheets, and Airtable;
- AI chat and data insights;
- table template generation;
- SQL query generation.
Cons:
- adds-on don’t always work;
- some users experienced billing issues.
Pricing: free plan available; Pro plan at $6.99/month.
Client Ratings: 4.6/5 on G2 reviews.
Coral AI
Coral AI is an AI-powered platform designed to analyze and process documents faster. It allows users to quickly summarize docs, find the information they need, translate, transcribe, and extract quotes from the files in seconds. Coral AI supports over 90 languages, making it a versatile tool for working with a variety of documents.
Pros:
- works in 90+ languages;
- allows to search key info within documents;
- summarizes long documents in seconds;
- saves 10-15 hours per week;
- transcribes audio files;
- allows users to extract quotes from documents.
Cons:
- relatively new platform and bugs may occur.
Pricing: free plan allows uploading 2 files; Executive plan at $14/month.
Client Ratings: no info.
Otio
Otio is an AI-powered platform designed to enhance research and writing processes. It offers a suite of tools aimed at simplifying complex tasks, automating workflows, and providing deeper insights into various content forms. It helps users quickly extract key information from various sources such as articles, documents, and videos. Using advanced models such as GPT-4, Claude 3.5, and Mistral, Otio enables efficient interaction with large amounts of data. It also offers an AI-powered text editor to fine-tune, paraphrase, and edit the text.
Pros:
- allows users to import various content types, including PDFs, Word documents, web links, and YouTube videos
- AI text editing and proofreading;
- automates complex research workflows;
- AI chat with the documents to extract key insights.
Cons:
- privacy and data concerns;
- limited text editing features.
Pricing: free plan available; Unlimited plan at $20/month.
Client Ratings: 3.9/5 on Trustpilot.
Hugging Face
Hugging Face is a leading platform for hosting and collaborating on unlimited public models, datasets, and applications. It serves as a central hub where developers, researchers, and marketers can share and access over 1 million pre-trained models across various modalities, including text, image, video, audio, and 3D rendering automation data.
Pros:
- provides access to more than 250,000 datasets;
- users can use these datasets as a corporate technology for workflow optimization and automation;
- access to open-source libraries: tools like Transformers, Diffusers, and Tokenizers support seamless integration and development of machine learning models;
- offers many models and datasets, reducing the need to build from scratch.
Cons:
- code is not always accurate;
- some users reported bugs.
Pricing: free access to public models and datasets; Pro account at $9/month.
Client Ratings: 4.2/5 on Gartner.
Summarize.tech
Summarize.tech is an AI-powered tool for creating summaries from YouTube videos. It enables users to review all important information without watching the entire video.
Pros:
- AI-powered summarization to extract key points from videos;
- summarizes various types of videos, including academic lectures, live events, government meetings, interviews, and documentaries.
Cons:
- it doesn’t always understand the context of the video, resulting in an inaccurate summary;
- the interface is not user-friendly and can be enhanced;
- supports only YouTube videos.
Pricing: free version available; Premium plan at $10/month.
Client Ratings: 4.8/5 on ProductHunt.
Formula Bot
Formula Bot is an AI-powered platform to make data analysis easier and faster. It allows users to connect their data sources (Excel, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Sheets, Google Trends) in a few clicks to generate insights in seconds. It helps users connect, analyze, visualize, clean, transform, and enrich their data. By converting text into charts, analysis, tables, advanced models, and more, users can automate boring tasks, save time, and enhance productivity.
Pros:
- no coding needed;
- allows users to analyze their data through a simple conversation with digital assistants that can generate insights, charts, and tables;
- integrations with Excel, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Sheets, and Google Trends.
Cons:
- lacks unique approaches to complex data that require more complex formulas.
Pricing: free plan includes 10 chat messages and a 5MB file upload limit per month; Unlimited plan at $15/month.
Client Ratings: 4.5/5 on G2 reviews.
Formularizer AI
Formularizer is an AI assistant for spreadsheets that provides instant formulas, explanations, and data insights from user instructions. It allows users to save time and boost work productivity. Formularizer offers two modes: generate a formula from the description or explain the formula. Users can also choose the platform for which they need formulas.
Pros:
- 2 modes;
- works as a digital assistant;
- can generate formulas from the description or explain the formula the user entered.
Cons:
- Inaccuracies may occur in the generated formulas.
Pricing: free plan available; Pro plan at $7/month.
Client Ratings: 5/5
AI Excel Bot
AI Excel Bot is an AI platform that allows users to write Excel and Google Sheets formulas 10x faster. Users can generate complex formulas in seconds using simple text instructions. Also, AI can help users understand complex formulas and write VBA.
Pros:
- generates formulas 10x faster;
- VBA code support;
- Chrome add-on.
Cons:
- some features do not work even with the Pro plan;
- limited customization.
Pricing: free plan includes 5 formulas, code or task generation and explanation per month. Pro plan at $5.99/month.
Client Ratings: 4.0/5 on G2 reviews.
AI tools comparison table
Final thoughts: Which tool to choose?
With so many AI tools, choosing can seem overwhelming. The main question is which of them will really become your work assistant, and not just another program gathering dust in the subscription list? However, the main rule is simple: focus on your tasks and everyday needs.
If your work is related to data analysis, then GPT Excel or Formula Bot can significantly reduce the time spent on creating complex formulas. Do you work with large texts and documents? Coral AI or Otio will help you quickly find the necessary information and create high-quality summaries. For marketers and content creators, Summer AI or Hugging Face will be useful, since they can automate trend analysis and content generation.
It is better to master one or two tools and use them to the maximum rather than to install a dozen and use none of them. AI is just a tool, and the best results are achieved not by those who have more platforms, but by those who use them wisely.
If you’re looking for a custom GenAI solution for your business and need guidance, DATAFOREST can help. Fill out the form and our team will contact you soon to discuss the opportunities.
FAQ
Can AI be used to automatically write reports and produce analytic summaries?
Yes, AI tools can automatically analyze data, generate reports, extract key insights, and write summaries, which saves a lot of time.
What aspects of business operations does AI automate most effectively?
AI can automate business operations like data analysis, document processing, content proofreading, task management, communication automation, and customer support.
How difficult is it to implement AI tools into existing workflows?
Most AI solutions have simple integrations, but the level of complexity depends on the specifics of the business and the chosen tool.
What AI tools can automate document workflow?
Coral AI, Otio, and Hugging Face allow you to quickly structure, analyze, and process text documents.
How does AI improve the accuracy of business intelligence?
Artificial intelligence can process large amounts of data without errors, predict trends, and find patterns.
Which AI tools are most affordable for small and medium-sized businesses?
Summer AI, GPT Excel, AI Excel Bot, and Formula Bot offer free plans and affordable plans for SMBs.
Does AI have an impact on reducing employee workload?
Yes, automating routine tasks allows employees to focus on more strategic and creative aspects of their work.
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