AI-Based Tools for Starting and Scaling Your Business

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming our work, driving innovation and saving time.

If you’re looking to start a new business from scratch or expand an existing business, AI tools provide incredible opportunities for innovation and growth. With the right AI solutions in place, you can launch and proliferate.

What can AI tools do for your business? Here are a few of the benefits:

• Efficiency. With more tasks automated, you and your staff will save time and focus on the most critical work.
• Productivity. AI tools allow you to concentrate on the most mission-critical work and use your time wisely.
• Profitability. With more efficient and productive operations, and fewer staff costs, your bottom line will grow accordingly.
• Cost Reduction. AI lets you reduce operating costs by streamlining your operations and automating tasks that are currently done manually.
• Reduced Staffing. AI can take on many manual and repetitive tasks that otherwise would need to be done by staff.
• Customer Service. Tools like chatbots can create personalized customer experiences at scale, helping to attract and retain customers and drive sales.
• Return on Investment. Most AI tools have free and paid versions. You can test out what tools work best for you and your company.

Here is a closer look at some of the core business needs for launching and growing a business, and the AI tools that can help you achieve success.

Building a Business Plan

Having a sound business plan is critical. It lays out the framework for your business, its market, products and services, competition, pricing, marketing and leadership.

A business plan is a must when applying for funding, either from investors or a financial institution.

Upmetrics is a great AI tool for building your business plan. With Upmetrics, you can create text and modify the plan as needed. It comes with more than 400 sample business plans, video tutorials and guides.

A simple user interface helps you convert your ideas to compelling language and includes grammar and tone tools.

App Management

So many small-business owners grapple with the sheer volume of stuff that needs to be managed. Apps, channels, tools and notifications can interrupt us all day and cause distraction and lost productivity. Keeping all those elements corralled is vital for effective workdays.

theist helps access all your apps on a single dashboard, with a smart inbox that consolidates all your notifications and communications, connecting to your Slack account and all your work tools.

Project Management

Every company needs to manage multiple projects, often simultaneously. Keeping projects moving forward, assigning the right resources and checking on progress is critical to ensure all those projects are completed on time and within budget.

For a small company, hiring project managers may not be practical. That’s where ClickUp comes in. This cloud-based software streamlines project management, task planning and collaboration. Role-based AI tools let you accelerate your brainstorming ideas and create project outlines, improve workflow, create new tasks, write emails and automate repetitive tasks. It can be accessed on the web, desktop or mobile devices.

Email Assistant

Do you find your emails lacking, due to lack of time or trouble finding the right words? Email communication is central to most businesses today.

Lavender.ai is a unique solution. Like many AI tools, it can create email messages that are effective, resonant and clear. But Lavender goes beyond that.

The AI tools analyze your recipients’ writing styles and craft emails that match their style. The tool can help you connect with your recipients and suggest the best times of day to send them your messages.

Calendar Management

As a busy leader, your day can get away from you quickly. You need to keep your professional and personal lives organized.

Motion is an AI-fueled calendar app that helps you plan your day, factoring in deadlines, working hours, and how long it takes you to complete tasks, meetings and to-dos. It will build a schedule for your day and schedule meetings for you using automation tools.

Sales and Marketing Productivity

Sales are the lifeblood of new and growing businesses. You need to sell what you’re offering and have compelling marketing that attracts, entices and educates would-be customers.

ChatSpot.ai from HubSpot is designed specifically to enhance the productivity of your sales and marketing teams. Specifically, it integrates ChatGPT-3.5 and GPT-4 into the HubSpot customer relationship management (CRM) platform.

The tool uses a chat interface that can send follow-up emails, create new reports or customer and prospect segments, and assist with lead management.

The tool also includes prospecting templates and insights into customer data. It can even create AI-generated images from text.

Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management is an increasingly complex issue, especially as material shortages and shipping delays have disrupted channels. Without access to raw materials or critical supplies, your business could be stuck, and unable to fulfill orders.

Blue Yonder uses AI to generate demand predictions and set optimal inventory levels. With end-to-end insights into your supply chain and dynamic analytics, you can make real-time, data-driven decisions when changes occur to supply or demand.

Content Creation

If you want to draw visitors to your business, you need content. Blog posts, white papers and other thought leadership establish your business as knowledgeable about topics that are relevant to your customers and prospects.

Looking to streamline your content creation process? Consider integrating Chat GPT Prompts into your workflow. With Chat GPT Prompts, you can generate a variety of content ideas and prompts to fuel your creativity and engage your audience effectively.

Jasper AI is an ideal tool to use in creating your content. From blogs and articles to promotional copy and emails, Jasper can create tailored content that aligns with your brand voice.

You can integrate Jasper into your existing workflows and use it to gather real-time information essential for all your content needs.

Video Creation

Video content has become a powerful tool for businesses to effectively communicate with their audience. Well-crafted videos not only help establish but also reinforce your brand identity, creating a memorable and recognizable presence in the market. As technology continues to evolve, leveraging AI tools such as Revoicer for video creation enables you to deliver compelling voiceovers that resonate with your audience.

Image Creation

Whether it’s a logo for your business signage, images to go with a website or newsletter or other creative elements, graphic design is a key part of your company’s brand. Creating these brand elements is costly and can take a lot of time. Without them, your company is … a blank slate.

Dall-E 2 is an AI tool that lets you generate your images and art from descriptions and natural language prompts. Once you enter a prompt, the tool will generate four images. You can select from those four and iterate, further refining your idea until you have something that rings true.

Customer Support

Are you looking to help customers when they visit your website? Don’t rely on a static email address or 24/7 live support. Instead, use chatbots to engage with customers and help them by solving problems and answering questions.

Without strong customer support, website visitors can grow frustrated and leave your site for a competitor’s.

IBM Watson Assistant is an AI-powered virtual assistant that creates personalized experiences for website visitors. The tool can recognize natural language and create meaningful, helpful and productive conversations that drive business. It also can handle complex interactions and learn from past customer engagements while delivering personalized recommendations.

Sentiment Analysis

How do you truly know how your customers feel about your brand? That’s where sentiment analytics comes in. Understanding how people are reacting to your brand and talking about it is valuable, quantifiable information that can help refine messaging and respond when needed.

Qualtrics Connect collects, analyzes and interprets data from all experiential data. It takes information from social media channels, Google, Yelp and other review sites and gives you deeper insights. The tool engages customers, asking them questions at the right time and discovering the conversations they’re having about your company.

Recruitment

Every company needs talented employees to grow and thrive. Recruiting for open and new positions, tracking and screening candidates, reviewing resumes and scheduling interviews are all time-consuming tasks, especially for companies with small human resources departments.

Manatal is an easy-to-use recruiting platform that features AI functions that can screen applicants and make recommendations for the best candidates to interview for your positions.

The tool can score candidate profiles based on job criteria, enrich profiles with data from LinkedIn and social media apps, and source candidates from multiple channels.

Cybersecurity

You need to keep your company protected from persistent cyberattacks. Customer and employee data, networks, intellectual property and financial details must be secure.

Darktrace is an AI-powered cybersecurity solution that can detect, isolate and respond to threats in real time. It detects the patterns of data flow throughout the organization and uses that information to flag unusual information and mitigate intrusions before they can cause serious damage.

Code Writing

Do you need to write simple code for apps or your website? It’s a critical skill that many businesses spend thousands on. Unfortunately, learning to code can take months and take you away from other key projects.

Github Copilot uses AI language models to create code suggestions in real time. It also auto-completes code based on what you provide. It’s a powerful way to streamline the code-writing process and save time.

Conclusion

Technology is transforming every aspect of how we run a business, down to the smallest tasks. It’s a way to save time and money while driving productivity and innovation, and this is why it’s important to know what .

With the right AI tools, you can build your business, enhance key functions and accelerate growth.