“Do more with less” is pretty much what we’re all told these days. Back when I started my EA career, I was using a fax machine to send meeting schedules to our taxi company, and we had to wait for paper flight tickets to be couriered from our travel agent. In today’s world of having everything at our fingertips, the need to get everything done by yesterday is stressful and, at times, overwhelming.
For some, the thought of using automations and AI is a bit like the thought of me trying to use TikTok - unnecessary. I’ve managed my whole life without it, so why would I need it now? Unfortunately, unlike TikTok, one cannot just catch up on automations by watching videos on Instagram three weeks after they have gone viral.
Savoya has very kindly asked me to write a guide on how we assistants can use automations in our roles, and I want to show you some very specific examples. Hopefully you will be able to take one or two back to your office and implement them.
These days my job is to automate processes and implement systems to help businesses with their operations. Taking that and layering it with my 15 years as an EA should hopefully be a marriage made in heaven and you will go away feeling empowered to try out at least one of them.
Let’s get to it!
Whether you need to remind people to upload their receipts into Concur themselves, or hand them to you to process, I imagine the reminders get rather tedious. You try to be polite and gently remind people, but in reality you want to go over to their desk and search their pockets yourself (or inboxes - for those pesky email receipts).
If you use an instant messaging tool like Slack, you can set recurring reminders for people to submit their expenses. You can set up these recurring reminders to post to a channel or directly to a person every month ,quarter, or however you need.
Of course, it doesn’t just need to be expenses for which you are sending out the reminders. It can be anything that needs to be done regularly, such as timesheets.
Whether it’s a company-wide update, or an email to a hotel asking if they have availability for an event, you can use AI to help you. ChatGPT is great for this, or something like Perplexity. Also, if you have a paid account with Notion, the text generation functionality is really great. There are a couple of different ways you can use AI for this.
Firstly, you could explain to AI what it is that you want to cover in the email and ask it to draft one for you. You can then go through this draft and edit as needed. You can ask AI to change the tone, you can specify the audience, and you can ask for it to be a certain length.
Secondly, you can draft the email first, and then paste it into your AI software and ask it to edit it for you. You can ask it to sound more professional, or you can ask what it thinks you might have missed out.
If you use any kind of CRM software, chances are there are built-in automations to update people or teams when something happens. You can set these up to ensure people are notified or brought in at the right times.
If you use Monday CRM, there are pre-built automations that you can set up so that if a status changes, you can send an email to the team who would be next to look at the deal.
If you support the head of sales, you might set up a notification so that they are made aware of deals which become more than three months old, or you might set up an email to the whole company when a deal closes so that everyone can celebrate!
If you’re not sure how any of these work, you can ask AI how to set it up, or you can ask someone like me to help you!
If you are managing an office, chances are you will be responsible for one or more corporate contracts. It could be your Zoom subscription, your cleaning contract, or your IT provider.
Of course, you could have these all listed out on a spreadsheet with the corresponding renewal dates - which is absolutely fine. However, there are a few things you can do to make it more efficient.
If you’re using Excel or Google Sheets, you could set up Conditional Formatting so that any renewal date which is overdue turns red.
You could build your contracts database in something like Notion (the free version is perfect for this) and you could store all the contract information, as well as links to contracts (or even embed it). Here, you could set up renewal reminders so that you have enough time to go out to tender for a new provider, if required. You could set your renewal reminder several weeks or months in advance, depending on the value of the contract.
Going backwards and forwards with dates and times for meetings is tedious and time consuming. Utilizing Google’s appointment scheduler, you can send a link to someone for them to book their own meeting. This allows you to create a one-off schedule to send to someone without you sharing your exec’s calendar. Whilst this might not work well for urgent meetings where you would reschedule things to accommodate them, it could be ideal for asking your Exec’s team to schedule their quarterly reviews or end of year updates.
You might even use something like Calendly where you can have several different types of meetings (15 minutes, 1-hour, morning-only, etc) and send out the corresponding link. You will likely need the paid version for this.
I’m a huge fan of Fathom for taking my meeting notes (other softwares are available, such as Otter or Fireflies). It records everything for me, gives me a summary of what was discussed, and also lists out any actions. There are other providers, of course, but the free version of Fathom is absolutely brilliant. However, a word of caution when using this. Be VERY aware of the settings and whether or not a recording and transcript would be sent automatically after the meeting to all the attendees. This might be ok for weekly team meetings, but might not be ok for anything external. My advice is to turn anything like that off, and you can email a meeting link to the attendees if you need to afterwards.
How many times do we have to show people how to use our internal systems? We could create a user guide, but who has time to go through it step by step, taking screenshots etc etc. There are a couple of ways to do this really efficiently.
Firstly, use Scribe. Scribe is an AI tool which records a process as you are doing it, takes the screenshots, and highlights any buttons you press or information you add in. You can edit the results in a video or a document.
Secondly, if you don’t have access to Scribe, you can record your screen using something like Loom, or even just schedule your own Google Meet or Zoom call and record what you are doing.
However you do it, make sure you save it in a clear and obvious place so that people can access it. I’d suggest one of the following:
-A Notion page for user guides and instructions
-A Slack channel where you either bookmark it or have it saved in the Canvas
-A SharePoint page
Whether it’s the annual Summer party, a conference, or a management away day, everyone asks for the same thing - ‘something different’. AI can help you plan an itinerary, suggest where to go, and give some recommendations on what activities might be fun. Be careful with the free version of ChatGPT for this one, as the data it uses is a little out of date, but it can still give you some ideas.
If you have a wide variety of attendees, you might add some narrowing criteria into AI to help make the suggestions as relevant as possible. For example, you might have a wide range of age groups, and you might have someone in the group with additional physical needs. By adding that information, AI can be more specific in its suggestions.
If you have a long list of things that you need to include in an away day, add them all into AI and ask it to suggest an itinerary for you. You could also ask for suitable venue suggestions based on dates and distance from a specific airport or station.
Busy executives don’t like long documents or having to dig into systems to find information. AI can create executive summaries for you in an instant.
The Salesforce integration with Slack is excellent at this. Using Einstein AI, you can create summaries of deals that your salespeople have been working on in Salesforce. This could be really helpful if you are looking ahead in your Exec’s calendar and they have a meeting coming up with a big client. Imagine being able to send them a summary of all this year’s deals that you’ve done with them.
Perhaps there’s been a big news story or new law passed and you know your Exec will be really interested in it. You can upload the whole document or article into AI and ask it to produce a summary for you.
How much time does your Exec or team spend in 1:1 meetings each week? What about travel time? You could work through their calendars and add up all the time, but that would take hours. You could use Google Calendar’s Time Insights to draw you up a report that you could look at. Outlook does something similar, but you’ll need to download an app.
Using this data, you can investigate how much time your Exec is spending on external meetings, or speaking with HR. Perhaps they are spending too much time in recurring meetings - you might suggest ways to reduce this, by making them less frequent, or suggesting a delegate. With data, you can make informed decisions. Without it, you are just guessing.
Hopefully you have read this article and been inspired to utilize AI in one or more areas of your role. AI is like an assistant to us - and if we use it effectively, we really can do more with less. We can save time on the repetitive tasks so that we are freed up to work on the more complex things that really add value to our companies.
One final bonus tip is that you can automate pretty much any repetitive task which follows the premise of “if this, then that”. If this happens, then do that.
If it’s Wednesday, send out a Slack poll asking people what they want for lunch.
If I get an email from client ABC, then turn it red in my inbox
If I want IT support, then fill out this form
Tools like Zapier and Make can set these up for you - both have really good free accounts where you can set up basic automations.
Yvette specializes in Business Operations, having transitioned from being an EA into Ops.
She's worked at both large and small companies, so fully understands the nuances of both. In 2022 she set up her own Revenue Operations consultancy, focusing on process mapping, CRM implementation, and business process optimization.
Yvette has worked extensively within Financial Services, and went on to run the Commercial Operations for a high growth Aerospace company. She started her career as an EA and Office Manager which she did for 15 years. Yvette is also the founder and editor of The Admin Wrap - a weekly newsletter for administrative professionals.
In her spare time, Yvette is a weightlifter and runner (she competed in Hyrox last year), and she spends as much time in her garden as the British weather will allow.
You can find out more about Yvette at www.yvettepearson.com
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