Waikato Business News August/September 2023

16 WAIKATO BUSINESS NEWS, AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2023
Unleash the power of AI to increase
productivity in your business
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?
Imagine having an extraordinary
mind at your side,
ready to assist, suggest,
and co-create within the
very applications you rely on
daily. Writing emails, product
descriptions, and even policy
documents for you; generating
spreadsheet formulas based on
plain English, or cleaning up
data in seconds based on plain
English instructions.
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 of them were
allowed to use AI, the other
half were not. The results were
amazing. The consultants who
used AI completed tasks 25%
quicker and produced 40%
higher quality in their results!
What is more, the consultants
who performed the
worst in their benchmark tests
before the experiment, had the
biggest jump in performance
when using AI, with a 43%
improvement. The top consultants
still got a boost, but less
of one, meaning that using AI
can be a significant leveller in
THE DIGITAL
WORLD
BY JOSH MOORE
Josh Moore is the head
marketing fanatic at Duoplus,
a Hamilton-based digital
marketing agency that
helps clients get more leads
and sales through online
marketing. www.duoplus.nz
terms of performance across a
team.
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.
Create Spreadsheet
Formulas Using Plain
English
You can now use GPT within
Cars, cars, cars!
I
had the experience
yesterday of driving through
the Knighton Rd/Cameron
Rd/May St area. We had been
asked to comment on v urban
design, or lack thereof, in the
area – that’s another story.
However, one of the things
that immediately stood out was
the number of cars parked on
the street, and in driveways and
across footpaths.
This is the unfortunate outcome
when insufficient parking
is provided on site. This is particularly
true in areas with a lot
of student flats, which typically
have higher numbers of cars
per houshold or property.
There is a general move
underway – though not without
some resistance – in society
and from central and local government,
to reduce our dependence
on cars, and to enable
and encourage more public
transport use, walking and
cycling. Largely this is driven
by our ugrent need to reduce
carbon emissions, transport
being our second largest producer
after agriculture.
With my productivity hat
on, I cannot see how it is efficient
to move millions of people
around in individual metal
boxes. I readily acknowledge
that public transport is not
suitable for every place or situation.
But the beautiful thing
is that when more people use
public transport or active
transport modes, it also makes
the roads freer and easier for
Google Sheets or Microsoft
Excel to write formulas for you.
There is a small setup process
that is required, but once
connected, you can save considerable
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
those who genuinely need – or
just really want – to drive.
Having said that, and while
our team would love to see a
future with fewer cars – architectural
practices after all being
often idealistic, green-minded
places – we are pragmatic
enough to recognise that, at
least in the immediate future,
most households have at least
a couple of vehicles, and therefore,
require somewhere to put
them.
The 2020 National Policy
Statement on Urban Development
(NPS-UD), prevents
local councils from requiring
developers to provide a set
minimum number of carparks
in new developments. While
well-intentioned, and appropriate
to encourage higher
density development in city
centres, the broad application
of this rule to all urban areas
formulas for you that would
normally take an Excel expert to
write. Things like XLOOKUP,
INDEX, LEFT, MID, RIGHT,
MATCH, REGEXEXTRACT
and more. With ChatGPT connected
you can just describe in
plain English what you want to
happen, and it will create the
formula for you.
Easily Extract Specific
Information From Your
Spreadsheet
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
LANDMARKS
BY PHIL MACKAY
Phil Mackay is Business
Devolpment Manger at
Hamilton-based PAUA,
Procuta Associates Urban +
Architecture
means private developers are
less likely to include adequate
parking provisions for new
housing.
Until a change is made to
allow councils more scope to
control parking in suburban
developments, the burden will
fall on ratepayers to provide
additional on-street parks, and
we will see suburban streets
increasingly crowded with
parked cars.
from a big list of data.
For example, if we have a
list of full names, and you want
to extract the first names, and
remove duplicates, you can
use GPT_EXTRACT to quickly
achieve that without any complex
formula.
e.g. We can use the formula:
=GPT_EXTRACT(B3:B11,
”unique first names”).
Almost instantly the result
comes back with the first
names from that range.
The power comes in
ChatGPT understanding what
you want to extract. You might
hand it a list of contacts where
all the information is in a single
cell, and you can ask it
to extract names and email
addresses or company names,
and it understands and pulls
out the data.
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!
Access Internet
Information from Within
Your Spreadsheet
There are other functions
where GPT will access its
knowledge base to provide
information we didn’t already
have in the sheet.
=GPT_TABLE("Make a
table of the top 3 Korean car
manufacturers with their
annual revenue and number
of employees")
Sheets returns a table with
the data almost instantly.
That’s wild!
Creating Emails and Policy
Documents in Google
Docs
One of the things ChatGPT has
become famous for is its ability
to write very well-written content.
Let’s look at two scenarios.
In the first scenario you
want to create a professional
and friendly email to thank
everyone who attended your
recent networking event. Simply
use plain English in the
custom prompt box to tell Docs
what you want and then let it do
the work for you.
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.
In the second scenario, you
could get GPT + Docs to create
social media marketing content
for your business.
For our example, 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 and you’ll
be suitably impressed with it
returns.
I don’t know how many
times I have sat at the keyboard
waiting for inspiration, trying
to find just the right words, and
ending up with a result I’m not
entirely happy with.
Never again! While the
results aren’t always perfect,
it is much faster to edit than
to start from scratch. 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,
or alternatively find yourself
struggling to keep up with the
competition.