What if I told you that the most popular business productivity tools—apps like Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Excel—could now harness the boundless power of ChatGPT?
It’s like having an extraordinary mind at your side, ready to assist, suggest, and co-create within the very applications you rely on daily. This is not science fiction; it’s the current reality that businesses are taking advantage of, and those who aren’t are getting left behind.
A joint study just released from Harvard, MIT, Warwick Business School and Boston Consulting Group tested over 700 consultants, requiring them to complete a series of tasks. Half were allowed to use AI. They completed tasks 25 per cent quicker and produced 40 per cent higher quality in their results.
Welcome to a world where ChatGPT becomes your indispensable partner in achieving unparalleled excellence. So how do can you use ChatGPT in everyday business to increase productivity? Here are some ideas.
You can now use GPT within Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel to write formulas. A small setup process is required, but once connected, you can save time and effort.
Let’s look at an overly simple example. Having entered sales data for last year, you can ask GPT in plain English, for the formula you need to calculate the totals. For example, “total all sales figures in cells c3 to f3.”
GPT replies saying, “Assuming the sales figures are in cells C3, D3, E3, and F3, you can use the following formula: =SUM(C3:F3)”
But where the power really kicks in is writing complex formulas for you that would normally take an Excel expert to write. With ChatGPT connected you can just describe in plain English what you want to happen, and it will create the formula for you.
You can also use some specific GPT functions to extract information from within cells. This can be extremely useful for extracting names, emails, domains, or company names from a big list of data.
The power comes in ChatGPT understanding what you want to extract.
One of our team members spent three hours manually creating some very complex formulas to extract URLs from a long list of data. Another team member used a ChatGPT function to achieve the same result in less than four minutes.
One of the things ChatGPT has become famous for is its ability to write very well-written content. We can tell GPT that we want it to, “create a brief thank you email to send to the people who attended our networking evening”. The results come back within seconds, and it’s very well written.
We could tell GPT that we want it to, “write a LinkedIn post, welcoming our new sales manager, Tim Major, formerly Queensland Territory Manager for XYZ Widgets in Sydney”. The result is superb. If you haven’t tried it before, try these prompts as examples.
While the results aren’t always perfect, the speed and productivity boost that comes from embracing AI is so impressive that every office-based company needs to be embracing AI to boost productivity and effectiveness.
- Josh Moore is head of marketing at Duoplus
