Waikato Business News August/September 2023
Waikato Business News has for a quarter of a century been the voice of the region’s business community, a business community with a very real commitment to innovation and an ethos of cooperation.
Waikato Business News has for a quarter of a century been the voice of the region’s business community, a business community with a very real commitment to innovation and an ethos of cooperation.
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16 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS, AUGUST/SEPTEMBER <strong>2023</strong><br />
Unleash the power of AI to increase<br />
productivity in your business<br />
What if I told you that the most popular<br />
business productivity tools—apps<br />
like Google Sheets, Google Docs,<br />
and Excel—could now harness the<br />
boundless power of ChatGPT?<br />
Imagine having an extraordinary<br />
mind at your side,<br />
ready to assist, suggest,<br />
and co-create within the<br />
very applications you rely on<br />
daily. Writing emails, product<br />
descriptions, and even policy<br />
documents for you; generating<br />
spreadsheet formulas based on<br />
plain English, or cleaning up<br />
data in seconds based on plain<br />
English instructions.<br />
This is not science fiction;<br />
it's the current reality that<br />
businesses are taking advantage<br />
of, and those who aren’t<br />
are getting left behind.<br />
A joint study just released<br />
from Harvard, MIT, Warwick<br />
<strong>Business</strong> School and Boston<br />
Consulting Group tested<br />
over 700 consultants, requiring<br />
them to complete a series<br />
of tasks. Half of them were<br />
allowed to use AI, the other<br />
half were not. The results were<br />
amazing. The consultants who<br />
used AI completed tasks 25%<br />
quicker and produced 40%<br />
higher quality in their results!<br />
What is more, the consultants<br />
who performed the<br />
worst in their benchmark tests<br />
before the experiment, had the<br />
biggest jump in performance<br />
when using AI, with a 43%<br />
improvement. The top consultants<br />
still got a boost, but less<br />
of one, meaning that using AI<br />
can be a significant leveller in<br />
THE DIGITAL<br />
WORLD<br />
BY JOSH MOORE<br />
Josh Moore is the head<br />
marketing fanatic at Duoplus,<br />
a Hamilton-based digital<br />
marketing agency that<br />
helps clients get more leads<br />
and sales through online<br />
marketing. www.duoplus.nz<br />
terms of performance across a<br />
team.<br />
Welcome to a world where<br />
ChatGPT becomes your indispensable<br />
partner in achieving<br />
unparalleled excellence.<br />
So how do can you use<br />
ChatGPT in everyday business<br />
to increase productivity? Here<br />
are some ideas.<br />
Create Spreadsheet<br />
Formulas Using Plain<br />
English<br />
You can now use GPT within<br />
Cars, cars, cars!<br />
I<br />
had the experience<br />
yesterday of driving through<br />
the Knighton Rd/Cameron<br />
Rd/May St area. We had been<br />
asked to comment on v urban<br />
design, or lack thereof, in the<br />
area – that’s another story.<br />
However, one of the things<br />
that immediately stood out was<br />
the number of cars parked on<br />
the street, and in driveways and<br />
across footpaths.<br />
This is the unfortunate outcome<br />
when insufficient parking<br />
is provided on site. This is particularly<br />
true in areas with a lot<br />
of student flats, which typically<br />
have higher numbers of cars<br />
per houshold or property.<br />
There is a general move<br />
underway – though not without<br />
some resistance – in society<br />
and from central and local government,<br />
to reduce our dependence<br />
on cars, and to enable<br />
and encourage more public<br />
transport use, walking and<br />
cycling. Largely this is driven<br />
by our ugrent need to reduce<br />
carbon emissions, transport<br />
being our second largest producer<br />
after agriculture.<br />
With my productivity hat<br />
on, I cannot see how it is efficient<br />
to move millions of people<br />
around in individual metal<br />
boxes. I readily acknowledge<br />
that public transport is not<br />
suitable for every place or situation.<br />
But the beautiful thing<br />
is that when more people use<br />
public transport or active<br />
transport modes, it also makes<br />
the roads freer and easier for<br />
Google Sheets or Microsoft<br />
Excel to write formulas for you.<br />
There is a small setup process<br />
that is required, but once<br />
connected, you can save considerable<br />
time and effort.<br />
Let’s look at an overly simple<br />
example. Having entered<br />
sales data for last year, you can<br />
ask GPT in plain English, for<br />
the formula you need to calculate<br />
the totals. For example,<br />
“total all sales figures in cells<br />
c3 to f3.”<br />
GPT replies saying,<br />
“Assuming the sales figures<br />
are in cells C3, D3, E3, and F3,<br />
you can use the following formula:<br />
=SUM(C3:F3)”<br />
But where the power really<br />
kicks in is writing complex<br />
those who genuinely need – or<br />
just really want – to drive.<br />
Having said that, and while<br />
our team would love to see a<br />
future with fewer cars – architectural<br />
practices after all being<br />
often idealistic, green-minded<br />
places – we are pragmatic<br />
enough to recognise that, at<br />
least in the immediate future,<br />
most households have at least<br />
a couple of vehicles, and therefore,<br />
require somewhere to put<br />
them.<br />
The 2020 National Policy<br />
Statement on Urban Development<br />
(NPS-UD), prevents<br />
local councils from requiring<br />
developers to provide a set<br />
minimum number of carparks<br />
in new developments. While<br />
well-intentioned, and appropriate<br />
to encourage higher<br />
density development in city<br />
centres, the broad application<br />
of this rule to all urban areas<br />
formulas for you that would<br />
normally take an Excel expert to<br />
write. Things like XLOOKUP,<br />
INDEX, LEFT, MID, RIGHT,<br />
MATCH, REGEXEXTRACT<br />
and more. With ChatGPT connected<br />
you can just describe in<br />
plain English what you want to<br />
happen, and it will create the<br />
formula for you.<br />
Easily Extract Specific<br />
Information From Your<br />
Spreadsheet<br />
You can also use some specific<br />
GPT functions to extract<br />
information from within cells.<br />
This can be extremely useful<br />
for extracting names, emails,<br />
domains, or company names<br />
LANDMARKS<br />
BY PHIL MACKAY<br />
Phil Mackay is <strong>Business</strong><br />
Devolpment Manger at<br />
Hamilton-based PAUA,<br />
Procuta Associates Urban +<br />
Architecture<br />
means private developers are<br />
less likely to include adequate<br />
parking provisions for new<br />
housing.<br />
Until a change is made to<br />
allow councils more scope to<br />
control parking in suburban<br />
developments, the burden will<br />
fall on ratepayers to provide<br />
additional on-street parks, and<br />
we will see suburban streets<br />
increasingly crowded with<br />
parked cars.<br />
from a big list of data.<br />
For example, if we have a<br />
list of full names, and you want<br />
to extract the first names, and<br />
remove duplicates, you can<br />
use GPT_EXTRACT to quickly<br />
achieve that without any complex<br />
formula.<br />
e.g. We can use the formula:<br />
=GPT_EXTRACT(B3:B11,<br />
”unique first names”).<br />
Almost instantly the result<br />
comes back with the first<br />
names from that range.<br />
The power comes in<br />
ChatGPT understanding what<br />
you want to extract. You might<br />
hand it a list of contacts where<br />
all the information is in a single<br />
cell, and you can ask it<br />
to extract names and email<br />
addresses or company names,<br />
and it understands and pulls<br />
out the data.<br />
One of our team members<br />
spent three hours manually<br />
creating some very<br />
complex formulas to extract<br />
URLs from a long list of data.<br />
Another team member used a<br />
ChatGPT function to achieve<br />
the same result in less than<br />
four minutes!<br />
Access Internet<br />
Information from Within<br />
Your Spreadsheet<br />
There are other functions<br />
where GPT will access its<br />
knowledge base to provide<br />
information we didn’t already<br />
have in the sheet.<br />
=GPT_TABLE("Make a<br />
table of the top 3 Korean car<br />
manufacturers with their<br />
annual revenue and number<br />
of employees")<br />
Sheets returns a table with<br />
the data almost instantly.<br />
That’s wild!<br />
Creating Emails and Policy<br />
Documents in Google<br />
Docs<br />
One of the things ChatGPT has<br />
become famous for is its ability<br />
to write very well-written content.<br />
Let’s look at two scenarios.<br />
In the first scenario you<br />
want to create a professional<br />
and friendly email to thank<br />
everyone who attended your<br />
recent networking event. Simply<br />
use plain English in the<br />
custom prompt box to tell Docs<br />
what you want and then let it do<br />
the work for you.<br />
We can tell GPT that we<br />
want it to, “create a brief thank<br />
you email to send to the people<br />
who attended our networking<br />
evening.”<br />
The results come back<br />
within seconds, and it’s very<br />
well-written.<br />
In the second scenario, you<br />
could get GPT + Docs to create<br />
social media marketing content<br />
for your business.<br />
For our example, we could<br />
tell GPT that we want it to,<br />
“write a LinkedIn post, welcoming<br />
our new sales manager,<br />
Tim Major, formerly<br />
Queensland Territory Manager<br />
for XYZ Widgets in<br />
Sydney.”<br />
The result is superb. If you<br />
haven’t tried it before, try these<br />
prompts as examples and you’ll<br />
be suitably impressed with it<br />
returns.<br />
I don’t know how many<br />
times I have sat at the keyboard<br />
waiting for inspiration, trying<br />
to find just the right words, and<br />
ending up with a result I’m not<br />
entirely happy with.<br />
Never again! While the<br />
results aren’t always perfect,<br />
it is much faster to edit than<br />
to start from scratch. The<br />
speed and productivity boost<br />
that comes from embracing<br />
AI is so impressive, that every<br />
office-based company needs<br />
to be embracing AI to boost<br />
productivity and effectiveness,<br />
or alternatively find yourself<br />
struggling to keep up with the<br />
competition.