8 Practical Ways Businesses Can Implement AI in the Workplace Today

Ask ten employees at a business whether their company “uses AI,” and you’ll probably get ten different answers, because they’re each thinking of something different. One person means the AI feature built into their email. Another means the tool they found on their own last month to help write reports. 

That’s the gap most businesses are sitting in right now. AI is already touching the workday in scattered, unplanned ways, but few organizations have decided, on purpose, where it actually belongs.

The businesses making real progress with AI are the ones looking at where employees already lose time: a repetitive task, a manual process, a search that takes longer than it should, and putting AI to work there specifically.

Here are some practical ways to put that into action.

1. Cut Down on Repetitive Administrative Tasks

Most offices have repetitive work hiding in plain sight.

An employee receives a request and forwards it to another department. Someone follows up on a routine inquiry. Another person spends part of every morning sorting messages or updating records.

AI can help identify the type of request, prioritize it, and send it to the right person or department. Automation can then handle routine steps that follow.

For example, an AI-enabled workflow could identify the subject of messages arriving in a shared inbox and route them to the appropriate team. Employees still handle the customer interaction but spend less time manually sorting requests.

These capabilities can become even more useful when connected with applications employees already use, such as a CRM or service platform.

2. Make Document Processing Less Manual

Invoices, contracts, applications, purchase orders, forms, and customer records still move through organizations every day.

Someone often has to review each document, pull out the relevant information, and enter that information into the correct system. 

AI can help recognize document types and extract information such as names, dates, invoice numbers, or account information. That data can then move into an existing workflow instead of requiring manual entry.

3. Take Some of the Manual Work Out of AP and AR

Accounts payable involves plenty of repetitive work. Invoices arrive in different formats, information needs to be captured, purchase orders may need to be checked, and approvals have to reach the right people.

AI can assist with invoice recognition and data extraction, while automated workflows can route invoices for approval and flag questionable information for review.

Accounts receivable teams may find similar opportunities around payment information, records, and routine communications.

It also helps to look at the entire process. If employees are pulling information from one system only to enter it into another, integration may solve part of the problem.

4. Help Employees Find Information Faster

A document might be saved in a shared folder, buried in an email thread, stored in a document management system, or sitting inside another business application. Even when employees know information exists, locating it can take time.

AI-powered search can make large collections of business information easier to navigate. Employees may be able to ask questions, locate relevant documents, identify information within them, or summarize longer content.

This can be useful for policies, procedures, customer documentation, project information, and other materials employees regularly reference.

Permissions remain important. AI-powered search should respect existing access restrictions. An employee who cannot normally access a document should not gain access simply because an AI system can find it.

5. Give Employees Help With Everyday Communication

For many employees, this is already their most familiar experience with artificial intelligence in the workplace.

Generative AI can help prepare an email, summarize a meeting, organize notes, create a first draft, or condense a long conversation.

Someone facing a lengthy email thread might use an approved AI assistant to get caught up before responding. Another employee might use it to turn meeting notes into an initial recap.

These capabilities may already be available within communication and productivity software the business uses.

6. Make Business Data Easier to Work With

Companies collect data constantly, but making sense of it can be much harder.

AI features within business applications can help summarize data, identify patterns, organize information, and surface areas that deserve further review.

A sales manager might use AI to examine activity over a period of time. A department head could summarize a large report before looking more closely at individual sections. Employees may also use AI assistants to help organize or interpret spreadsheet data.

7. Use AI Behind the Scenes in Cybersecurity

Some of the most useful workplace AI may be technology employees never interact with directly.

Security platforms process large amounts of activity as devices connect to networks, users sign into accounts, and files move between systems.

AI and machine learning can help these tools identify unusual behavior, recognize patterns, and surface activity that may indicate a security threat. This can make it easier to spot potential problems among the large number of events a security platform processes every day.

These capabilities are particularly useful as cybercriminals use AI to create more convincing phishing messages and other deceptive content. As threats become harder to recognize at a glance, AI can give security tools another way to identify suspicious activity that might otherwise be missed.

8. Look at the AI Features You May Already Have

Implementing AI does not always require another application.

Software businesses you already pay for may include AI capabilities for email, meetings, documents, spreadsheets, collaboration, security, reporting, or workflow automation.

Employees might already have access to meeting summaries, writing assistance, data analysis, intelligent search, or automated document processing. IT can determine which capabilities are available and whether they meet the organization’s security requirements.

Reviewing existing technology first can also prevent departments from purchasing separate AI products that duplicate capabilities the company already owns.

Found an AI Opportunity? What Comes Next?

Identifying a possible AI use case is only the beginning.

Before choosing a product, look at the process itself. Where does work slow down? Which steps are repetitive? What systems are involved? Where do employees manually transfer information?

Those questions can help determine whether AI is the right answer. In some cases, workflow automation, better integration, or a change to an existing application may solve the problem more effectively.

Next, define the improvement you want to see. That might mean reducing processing time, eliminating repetitive data entry, making information easier to find, or freeing employees to focus on work that requires their experience.

Starting with a pilot project gives the business something concrete to evaluate. Did it save time? Was the information accurate? Did employees find it useful? Those answers can help determine whether the approach should be adjusted or expanded.

Practical AI Also Needs Clear Guardrails

AI can find its way into everyday work before a business has established guidelines for its use. Someone might paste an email into a public AI tool, upload a document for a summary, or connect an AI application to company files without realizing how that information may be stored or used.

A practical AI policy should define which tools are approved and what information can be shared with them. Customer records, financial information, intellectual property, passwords, confidential documents, and regulated data may require restrictions.

Before connecting an AI application to company systems, ask a few important questions. What data can it access? Where is that information stored? Is submitted data used to train the provider’s models? Does the application have access to more information than it actually needs?

Human review matters too. AI-generated information can be incomplete or inaccurate, even when it sounds convincing. Businesses should determine where verification is required, particularly when the output affects customers, finances, security, or important decisions.

IT or a Managed Services provider can help evaluate these issues before an AI tool becomes part of an everyday workflow, helping the business benefit from AI without giving applications unnecessary access to company information.

Find Practical Uses for AI With Blue Technologies

Knowing you want to use AI is one thing. Figuring out where it can improve the way your business works is another.

Blue Technologies can help evaluate your existing processes, systems, and software to determine where AI, workflow automation, better integration, or technology you already have could make a difference.

Blue can also help address the security side, including how AI tools access company systems and data. With experience in AI consulting, workflow automation, Managed IT, cybersecurity, and document solutions, Blue Technologies can help you take a practical, informed approach to AI.

Interested in finding practical ways to use AI in your workplace? Contact Blue Technologies to start the conversation.