Let’s be real, AI is here to stay, whether you like it or not.
With the increasing pressure to optimize their operations, artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing how businesses operate and AI tools are the emerging byproduct as essential allies in the race against time for efficiency and productivity.
According to a study conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group, it is revealed that the usage of AI tools have helped businesses and users to improve throughput by an average of 66% when performing realistic tasks. To better visualize this impact, the study also concluded that business professionals could write 59% more documents per hour with the assistance of AI tools, while programmers are able to complete 126% more projects per week when utilizing existing AI tools to help with their codes. These statistics highlight the substantial impact and positive effects that AI tools can have on productivity and operational efficiency.
Especially helpful in a startup landscape, in which founding teams are usually short of staff and manpower, founders or founding team members usually juggle a lot of workload, burning candles on every end that they could find. In this case, AI tools are powerful companions that could accelerate growth and streamline operation, optimizing procedures so you could focus more on more important tasks.
In this article and the third piece in our series of AI tools recommendations, here are the top 6 AI platforms to help you streamline your businesses and save more time to focus on more important tasks!
Otter AI
Otter AI is one of the best AI meeting assistants out there in the market with its powerful services to convert spoken language into written text with high accuracy, boasting impressive accuracy rates — ranging from 75% to 98% depending on several factors like audio quality and clarity of speakers. This tool is particularly helpful for taking meeting notes in sales meetings and interviews, facilitating effective communication and documentation, saving the hassle of physically taking notes or going through meeting recordings. Here are some key features that Otter AI offers, pioneering the new way of notetaking.
Otter’s AI Meeting Assistant generates real-time transcriptions during the meeting and offers immediate access to meeting notes and summaries using OtterPilot after each session with audio and text synchronization that allows team members to playback audio recordings while highlighting the corresponding text in real time, facilitating easy review and editing of transcripts.
It also auto-joins Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams meetings upon connected to your account to take notes, making it a seamless and hassle-free experience for users, and shares meeting notes and summaries with teammates via email and in the team’s Slack Channel to make sure everyone is on the same page. It would also assign action items from the meeting and keep the team aligned on the tasks to be completed.
In addition, Otter AI also easily integrates with your team’s workflow tools such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Egnyte, Amazon S3, Snowflake, and Microsoft SharePoint, adding onto existing tools that your team uses on a daily basis to further maximize the efficiency of productivity and output.
Don’t want to go through long, boring hours of meeting recordings?
Otter AI also has an AI chatbot that helps users get the most out of their meetings. Simply ask questions about your meeting notes and Otter will answer and generate content based on the transcriptions and notes taken during the meeting.
Otter AI is available for free with limited features that include 300 minutes of transcription per month, up to 30 minutes per conversation, unlimited live captions, ability to record and transcribe meetings, and access to meeting history (up to 25 meetings), perfect for those who want to try out the application before committing to a subscription plan.
For subscriptions, Otter AI starts at around $10 per user per month with enhanced team features such as shared custom vocabulary, tag speakers, assign action items to teammates, usage analytics, advanced searches, exports, and playbacks, with a higher quota for transcriptions and longer recorded sessions.
Notion AI
Notion is one of the best known tools for personal organization, team collaboration, and project management, often used in startups and businesses nowadays. 6Sense has reported that close to 100,000 companies have started using the centralized dashboard solution as a reporting tool in 2024. Now, users can experience an upgrade within the app itself with the introduction of Notion AI to further support your work and businesses, easing the process of organization and staying on track of things.
Notion AI is a tool that does everything from searching, generating, analyzing, and chatting, right inside the Notion app itself with no need for extensions. Users can find answers from their connected apps such as Notion, Slack, and Google Drive more easily with the help of the AI chat tool in the Notion app. Users simply choose the source they want information from and Notion AI is able to extract and provide concise information about the topic with no risks of data being used to train their AI models.
Powered by models like GPT-4 and Claude, Notion AI is able to create pages and generate content based on your conversations. Easily accessed with clicking the face ison anywhere on desktop, or quick-actions mobile toolbar, users can explore a wide range of topics irrespective of the relevancy to the workspace. This feature may be a springboard for research processes, brainstorming sessions. Notion AI can also further develop your ideas and add new information and suggestions to your content depending on your requirements.
Notion AI is free to use, but it is with its limitations on the free tier, such as basic page analytics, 7 page history, and an invite of up to 10 guests to the collaborative workspace.
With different tiers of subscription starting from $8 per member per month, Notion AI is exponentially more powerful with more customisations and automations tailored to users’ usage, with unlimited file uploads and blocks for teams. Enterprise plans comprise more administrative tools for use, such as SCIM user provisioning, SAML single sign-on, advanced analytics and compliance tools to help audit the workplace and keep all data safe and secure.
Asana
Asana is a work management platform powered by AI to help teams work smarter and scare more effortlessly when it comes to managing projects and automating workflows. Since its launch in 2012, it has become a popular choice for businesses of all sizes due to its user-friendly interface and features that enhance productivity and collaborative efforts. From Google to Spotify and Amazon, it is reported by its website that 73% of the Fortune 500 are Asana customers.
From start to finish, Asana is designed to accelerate project management through its key features such that team members stay on top of things and save time on organizational tasks to get onto the important executional matters. It is an all-in-one platform that is scalable and easy to navigate.
Asana integrates with over 170 apps such as Slack, Google Workplace, and Microsoft Office, perfect for users to stay in sync when using different tools and platforms. Resource management features such as workload and capacity planning are also available to help members plan accurately and maximize their impact through strategizing their tasks on hand.
With the trend of generative AI, Asana AI is also introduced to help users focus and automate routine work, and accelerate decision-making. This AI tool helps with adapting into the organization and effectively cuts down time for planning, execution, and reporting with its smart designs. Asana also helps to supercharge organizations to increase project load by 15 to 20 percent, according to an independent study done on the platform by Nucleus Research.
Operating on a freemium model, Asana subscriptions starts at $10.99 per user per month, with additional functionalities such as timeline views, task dependencies, and project dashboards on top of the free features that the personal plan offers, while the advanced plan offers more advanced tools, including goals tracking, workload management, and enhanced reporting capabilities. Enterprise options are also available tailored to the organization’s needs that may require advanced security and administrative controls.
Zeni
Zeni is an AI-powered bookkeeping and financial management platform designed specifically for startups and small businesses. With its AI-driven approach to bookkeeping and access to expert support, Zeni enables businesses to maintain accurate financial records while focusing on strategic growth initiatives. The platform aims to simplify the complexities of financial operations through automation and real-time insights, allowing business owners to focus on growth rather than getting bogged down in accounting tasks.
Financial features such as AI Bookkeeping and AI reimbursements help users with receipt analysis, reconciliation, translation optimizations, and vendor verifications to ensure that the accounts of the business are clear from the start. The service includes Zeni professionals for users to get personalized support and financial consultation with GAAP compliance guaranteed.
Several other features such as AI Business Credit Card, AI Bill Pay, and AI Business Checking also help to unlock seamless and smart payments with AI categorisation and suggestions to maximize savings, simplifying expense management and accounting processes. It is fast, risk-free, and built for scale, with $1.3 billion in monthly transactions managed by Zeni.
From pre-seed to Series C+, Zeni has a tailored bookkeeping service for businesses at any stage. Zeni starts at $399 per month with features like basic AI bookkeeping, dedicated finance team, real-time financial insights, AI bill payments, and reimbursements, suitable for pre-revenue companies to keep track of their finances. For revenue generating companies, prices start at $574 per month with a more advanced set of features to help stay on track with the expenses and revenues by the company, with an enterprise plan option for larger organizations with more complex financial requirements.
Zapier
Zapier is an automation platform that connects over 7,000 applications, allowing users to automate repetitive tasks and streamline workflows without the need for any codes. It enables businesses and individuals to create Zaps, which are automated workflows that consist of triggers and actions across different apps and platforms. Loved by 99% of the Forbes Cloud 100 companies and 69% of Fortune 100 companies, Zapier is a safe and reliable platform for businesses of all sizes ready to scale and grow.
Users can build their own templates or use pre-built templates from other Zapier users to automate tasks, and some of the many things Zapier can do are fine-tuning ads on marketplace apps for e-commerce business owners keeping track of social trends with OpenAI and reporting it to Slack channels, and summarizing chatbot transcripts. As long as it is a process that can be automated, Zapier gets the job done. Zapier also offers Tables which are databases purpose-built for automation, and their Interfaces allow users to build professional apps, forms, and web pages that easily connect to Zaps and Tables.
Free users trying out get limited features, while pricing starts at around $30 per month, paid users get unlimited access to 10+ built-in tools that further help the automation processes to be easier, such as filters, formatters, looping, and webhooks, all without writing code or running servers.
We hope this gives you a comprehensive overview of some AI tools that can help improve the operations of your startup or organization. By leveraging these technologies, you can automate repetitive tasks, enhance data-driven decision-making processes, and streamline communication across different team members. The use of AI tools boosts productivity and allows team members to focus on strategic initiatives that drive growth without sacrificing time for tasks that could be done by AI tools. However, it is important to consider your specific operational needs to select the best aligned tools to help achieve your objectives and goals.
Remember, the right tools can empower your team to work smarter and faster to pave the way for sustainable growth and success for the company!
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