ReportWire

Tag: Efficiency

  • Claude Cowork Just Killed [ Insert App Name Here ] – Dragos Roua

    No, the title is not a mistake, it’s a reality. You can literally insert any app name there and it will still hold true. I know, I know, not quite ALL apps are replaceable by Claude Cowork, but still, a very sizable majority.

    What Is Claude Cowork?

    Think Claude Code, but for everyday tasks. If you are a coder (or a vibe coder), you already know what Claude Code is: the de facto AI tool for writing software, and it’s a damn good one. I’ve been using it for a few months already, as a developer (and not only) and I’m very pleased with it. It really makes my tedious tasks a thing of the past, and I can focus on high level architecture, bug fixing or adding features.

    Now, Claude Cowork does the same, only not for the code. I know it’s a bit difficult to wrap your head around this.

    So I’ll give you a few examples:

    • you can organize some files on your computer
    • you can ask Cowork to send messages (emails) for you
    • you can create files
    • you can crunch data from existing files and generate charts and diagrams

    Claude Cowork is in research preview at the moment of writing, only available to Max users – but I honestly think this product was launched with market fit already.

    The New UI Is Natural Language

    I’ve been using an app called CleanMyMac for many years. It essentially scans my hard drive every once in a while and helps me get rid of the clutter. Identify huge files, leftovers, duplicates, and delete them.

    I think you already know where I’m heading. Here’s a prompt I just used with Claude Cowork:

    evaluate my Desktop folder and suggest improvements of the file organization. Some of them I still need, but it’s difficult to find them. The first thing that comes to my mind is organizing everything by year folders (maybe months inside year folders too?), but also some thematic structuring will be useful. Just give me your feedback, don’t do anything yet

    It took Cowork about 5-6 minutes to:

    • identify duplicates and delete them
    • understand the type of file and its content (not only size or date, which CleanMyMac also does)
    • create a semantically correct folder structure: Boarding Passes, Projects, Data Exports, etc
    • move all the files around and show me the new structure

    I find this impressive. And I think this hints at a completely new way (I was about to use the word “paradigm”, but let’s stick to “way” for now) in which we are using computers.

    Before, we had visual interfaces with fixed layouts and actionable surfaces – buttons, checkboxes, menus. We were the ones initiating a workflow through these actionable surfaces, to generate some outcome.

    Now, we instruct someone else about the outcome and things get done. That’s it.

    But it goes even further. It can accomplish complex flows, involving several tools, for which there is no app yet. Read that again.

    Here’s another prompt:

    I want you to look in the Desktop folder and find me appTaskManager screenshots for Assess, Decide, Do and search functionality. I also want to use these screenshots to create a hero image 1256×640, with Assess, Decide, Do screens showing up the ADD framework.

    Claude Cowork identified the screenshots, created the hero image with all the required constraints, here’s a part of its output:

    The hero image is 1256×640 pixels and displays all three ADD framework screens (Assess, Decide, Do) side by side with color-coded labels matching your app’s theme (red for Assess, orange for Decide, green for Do).

    I followed up with this prompt:

    convert the hero image to .webp, make a folder called app_assets and move there the generated hero image, the containing iPhone screens as separate files, also .webp. and the hero search image, as separated .webp file

    It did this in a few seconds. I estimate this workflow would have taken me maybe 10-15 minutes, on a good day. Cowork did it in less than a minute.

    Endless Effectiveness

    I think AI tools, and especially Claude Cowork – which seems to have found its market fit from day one – are becoming extremely effective now. I didn’t use the words “good at what they do”, because that’s not the point. They are very, very effective tools.

    Imagine now that instead of prompting, we can chain a couple of other AI tools, like real time voice transcription and text-to-voice transform. That means we can actually talk to the machine. No more apps, no more UIs. Just endless effectiveness.

    Pitfalls? Yes, Quite A Lot

    While I find Claude Cowork extremely impressive, I think there are also some serious downsides. Some behavioral, some purely economical.

    From an economical point of view, an entire app ecosystem will crumble. Maybe not today, maybe not next week, but we will see this unfolding before our eyes in less than 6 months. Apps will fold. Companies will close. Developers will switch jobs.

    At the behavioral level, I already touched on this in a couple of posts here. If AI brings instant gratification, a.k.a. getting what we want instantly, then patience will become obsolete. If the friction involved in learning something new is gone, then we will literally become more stupid.

    And last, but not least, if content production will become that easy, a lot of people will jump to the low hanging fruit of letting AI do everything, flooding the market with cheap, bad, but instantly available content. Because of this, I strongly believe bio content, or content generated by humans, will become a delicacy, carrying a significant premium.

    Like this article, for instance. Not a word here was written with AI, yet I’m sharing my personal, live experience of using AI – which, in this current context, is like selling shovels instead of digging for gold.

    dragos@dragosroua.com (Dragos Roua)

    Source link

  • How to Break the Self-Improvement Loop That’s Burning You Out

    Self-improvement is a popular topic for entrepreneurs, especially at the start of a new year. Fresh ideas, exciting plans, and meaningful actions abound. Instead of trying to use every productivity tool available, what if the solution were to actually do less? 

    As a productivity coach, I’m well aware of what people face when they’re trying to improve their productivity levels. People tend to search for what I like to call productivity “silver bullets.” They’re a perceived tool or technique that will permanently solve all your productivity challenges. Find that silver bullet and you’re set for life. However, reality isn’t that quite cut and dry. 

    Your productivity levels are the summation of how well you manage your mindset, time, energy, tools, and resources. So how can you use what’s already available to your advantage and not jump on the latest productivity fad? The key lies in working smarter, and not harder. Follow these practical tips to break free from the dreaded cycle of self-improvement and productivity. 

    Stop being productive for productivity’s sake 

    You’re not completing tasks in your business just so you can cross them off your to-do list. The question is whether or not those tasks are moving you closer to your goals. What is your reason for doing the work you’re doing? Is there a vision, purpose, product, service, or group of people that drives you to do your work? Use this as your guiding light. 

    Each of your tasks should be tied towards your business’ goals, whether that’s sales, human resources, clients, customers, or marketing. Double check your current task list and see if the items are in line with your goals. If you find yourself working on non-essential tasks, then you’re missing out on what could actually be helping both yourself and your business move forward. 

    Pause purchasing new things

    Productivity tools can be quite helpful in your daily work. However, purchasing productivity tools without consideration of your true needs may do more harm. It’s akin to going to the store to buy a pair of shoes. If you purchase a pair that’s too small, you won’t have what you desire: a fitted pair of shoes.  

    Your self-improvement process starts with where you are right now. Take a quick survey of the tools available to you in your business. Apps, software, programs, notebooks, calendars, and planners all count. Which do you prefer and why? How can you better utilize items?  

    Go inside one interesting founder-led company each day to find out how its strategy works, and what risk factors it faces. Sign up for 1 Smart Business Story from Inc. on Beehiiv.

    Rashelle Isip

    Source link

  • The Main Street AI Playbook

    Recently, I fed a legal contract into ChatGPT and asked it to spot issues and rewrite a paragraph with my feedback. Minutes later, it completed the task about as well as most lawyers I’ve worked with.

    I still sent it to my attorney for review. His usual five-hour bill? Cut down to one hour. That’s an 80 percent cost reduction.

    OpenAI recently announced they’ll be working with investment banks to create AI agents that can do an investment banker’s job. The speculation is that AI companies are going to do this to every job vertical. Doctors. Lawyers. Accountants. Other white-collar work.

    There’s a possibility for massive disruption, so how can you prepare? With these three strategies: ownership, dispersion, and a tech-first approach.

    Here’s a paradox that creates opportunity: While everyone’s running to catch the AI bullet train in Silicon Valley, there’s real money in wiring yesterday’s businesses with tomorrow’s technology.

    The dispersion gap

    Silicon Valley moves at light speed. Main Street? It’s walking at a leisurely pace.

    The contrast is staggering. ChatGPT hit one million users in five days—the fastest adoption in history. Yet as of 2022, 27 percent of American small businesses did not have a website. Even among those that do, most are running on decade-old technology.

    Main Street adoption happens slowly. The first ecommerce transaction dates back to 1994, but it took until 2015 for ecommerce to make up 10 percent of retail purchases. By 2024, that climbed to 16.1 percent.

    This gap between invention and integration is an AI arbitrage opportunity.

    The ownership thesis

    Many people are looking at AI and asking, who wins?

    I’ve got a simple thesis: It’s the owners, and the people who best utilize the toolset. The owners win because as you integrate AI into a business, there’s pressure on the employees. The best employees become more productive, and the worst are replaced by AI tools.

    However, the last person to get fired in any business is the owner. They also accrue the profit from productivity gains.

    The thesis is simple: Buy, run, or operate low-tech Main Street businesses. Integrate AI. Dominate your local market while competitors are still working on setting up a Facebook page.

    Why yesterday’s businesses win

    While public technology companies trade at 44.4 times earnings, I’ve repeatedly found profitable Main Street businesses that sell for 32 percent returns at 3-4 times earnings. Someone who invests in Main Street buys actual revenue, real customers, cash flowing assets—not a pitch deck and a prayer.

    HVAC companies. Plumbing services. Main Street business services. They’re printing cash while startups burn through Series B funding, and the stock market sits on Everest with NVIDIA matching the total asset value of small countries.

    And those same Main Street businesses all have problems AI solves. Customer scheduling? Automate it. Billing headaches? Gone. Phone calls eating up staff time? Let AI handle it.

    I’ve acquired eight businesses, turning them into passive money machines, and lately I’ve been integrating AI into every one of them.

    Add the tech layer, and you’re suddenly the most efficient operator in a sleepy market. Your margins expand while your competitors’ tech stack is stuck in 2015.

    The 3-step playbook

    Here’s a three-step playbook I use when acquiring companies that will benefit from technological adoption.

    Step 1: Find the right target

    Look for fractured or unique market niches that can’t be easily turned into software. Perhaps there’s a huge opportunity for AI integration, like with accounting firms or digital marketing firms.

    The owner should be tired. Ready to exit. Undervaluing what they’ve built because they can’t see past the daily grind.

    Step 2: Rewire a company for AI

    First, document all processes. While doing this, figure out how much time each process takes and what can be handed off to AI agents and automated workflows.

    AI agents can do incredible things. Bookkeeping? Financial auditing? Appointment setting? Automate it.

    The result? I’ve seen 20-40 percent efficiency gains. Your cost structure drops while service quality improves. Customers get faster responses. Staff focuses on high-value work. I’ll re-invest the time savings into growth to supercharge the business.

    Step 3: Build your moat

    Now you’re the tech-first operator in a sleepy, local market. Your competitors can’t keep up—they lack the knowledge and urgency.

    Your margins expand while theirs compress. You can outbid them for talent, outspend them on marketing, and generate superior returns.

    Best part? You’ve built a repeatable, scalable playbook, and the sky’s the limit.

    The window is closing

    This opportunity is huge. But it has an expiration date.

    We’re in year three of the AI revolution. The dispersion gap is still wide, but it’s narrowing. The best operators are already doing this. Main Street opportunities will fall as the technology disperses throughout the economy.

    You have maybe 36 months before this becomes common practice. My lawyer’s bill got cut by 80 percent. In three years, every Main Street business will face the same pressure.

    The question isn’t whether AI will transform local markets. It’s whether you will be the one who profits from the transformation.

    Go inside one interesting founder-led company each day to find out how its strategy works, and what risk factors it faces. Sign up for 1 Smart Business Story from Inc. on Beehiiv.

    Joseph Drups

    Source link

  • When Executives Pontificate, Meetings Flatline

    Most executives don’t mean to hijack meetings. They’re trying to inspire, clarify, or share that one story from 1998 they swear still applies. However, somewhere between, “You know…” and minute 17 of the monologue, the meeting quietly dies. Pontification isn’t leadership. It’s just expensive noise. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Organizations don’t suffer from a lack of ideas from the top. They suffer from a lack of space for ideas from everyone else. 

    When talking becomes a distraction, not direction 

    Executives have disproportionate gravitational pull. One comment can redirect an entire meeting’s orbit. One story can retroactively redefine priorities. One “quick thought” can consume 20 minutes and derail the agenda. The meeting becomes theater rather than collaboration. Ironically, it leaves teams less informed, less aligned, and less energized than before.  

    Everyone leaves thinking the same thing, “Could that have been an email?” Pontification doesn’t merely take up airtime. It takes up oxygen, quietly suffocating diverse perspectives. Here’s what really happens in those moments: 

    • People with dissenting views self-edit. 
    • The most thoughtful contributors withdraw. 
    • Risk-taking evaporates because the “answer” already appears to be spoken. 
    • Meetings morph into agreement ceremonies instead of decision engines. 

    Leaders often insist they value candor and dialogue. However, if their monologue fills 70% of the meeting, they’ve already signaled what’s safe to say and what isn’t. Once you’re pulled in, time ceases to exist. The meeting ends without any decisions being made, no clarity, and five follow-up meetings to fix the original meeting. Congratulations! You’ve just created a full-time job for your calendar. 

    Why leaders fall into the pontification trap 

    Pontification is rarely ego-driven alone. Leaders often slip into it because: 

    • They believe storytelling equals clarity (it doesn’t).
    • There’s confusion between sharing experience and setting direction. 
    • They fear appearing disengaged if they aren’t speaking. 
    • There’s a lack of facilitation and only declaration. 
    • Their environment has rewarded commentary more than curiosity. 

    In many executive cultures, speaking more is subtly equated with influencing more. However, high-performing teams aren’t inspired by volume. They’re inspired by precision. 

    How to break the pontification cycle 

    The solution isn’t leader silence, but leader discipline. A leader who frames space instead of fills it signals trust, competence, and respect. They shape the conversation without dominating it. Instead of delivering soliloquies, they ask questions. They create a container for dialogue instead of consuming all available time. Great leaders don’t dominate meetings. They curate them. So instead, try this: 

    Andrea Olson

    Source link

  • Goodbye DOGE: The Former Epicenter of Trump and Elon Musk’s Spending War Is No More

    DOGE, the agency that shook up the federal bureaucracy in the early months of President Trump’s second term with its efforts to slash spending and headcount, is no more, the administration says.

    “That doesn’t exist,” Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Reuters earlier this month when asked about the status of the Department of Government Efficiency, the news service reported this morning.

    Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close confidante of Trump’s at the start of his second term, initially steered DOGE, although he and Trump subsequently had a falling out and Musk returned his focus to the private sector. The program, which still had eight months left on its mandate, was officially slated to end next summer, Reuters notes. But, according to Kupor, DOGE is no longer a “centralized entity,” and the government-wide hiring freeze that accompanied its efforts is over.

    The department’s legacy will likely be a point of debate for years to come, including in the next election cycle. Initially focused on reducing the size of the federal government—as well as slashing red tape and incorporating AI into the bureaucracy—critics argued that DOGE was overstating its savings and overstepping its authority in its efforts to gut federal agencies, push out workers, and eliminate contracts.

    According to Reuters, Kupor’s statements about DOGE no longer existing as a discrete entity are the Trump administration’s first formal acknowledgement that the program has been prematurely ended, although Trump has already been referring to the agency in the past tense. The Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, has now taken over many of the same cost-cutting and headcount-reducing efforts, according to Kupor himself as well as documents reviewed by Reuters.

    “At least two prominent DOGE employees are now involved with the National Design Studio, a new body created through an executive order signed by Trump in August,” Reuters reported in its exclusive story. “That body is headed by Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, and Trump’s order directed him to beautify government websites.”

    In a post on X, Kupor said that DOGE no longer has “centralized leadership” under its previous organizational structure, the USDS, but that “the principles of DOGE remain alive and well,” including de-regulation, anti-fraud efforts and efficiency.

    “DOGE catalyzed these changes,” Kupor wrote. “The agencies along with [OPM] and [the White House Office of Management and Budget] will institutionalize them!”

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Brian Contreras

    Source link

  • AI Isn’t Inherently Good or Bad. Leaders Must Decide to Use It Responsibly

    AI has rapidly evolved from an emerging innovation to an everyday companion, becoming an integral part of how work gets done. It is already reducing friction in countless tasks, helping people work faster and access information that once required hours of searching. This acceleration boosts productivity, frees up valuable time, and reduces workers’ cognitive load. Thus, it allows them to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time focusing on high-value projects. 

    However, AI use also carries risks. Without intention or oversight, it can spread misinformation and encourage intellectual complacency. The temptation to accept outputs at face value can sideline human judgment. Worse still, relying too heavily on AI can lead to what researchers call “cognitive offloading.” These are subtle, often unnoticed changes in our thinking patterns, where the ease of delegation to AI replaces active mental engagement. If left unchecked, this may reduce creativity, critical reasoning skills, and independent thought, and it’s happening faster than anyone could have imagined. 

    What recent data reveals 

    Recent research from OpenAI and Anthropic provides a more nuanced view of AI adoption than headlines might suggest. Despite the hype around AI transforming the workplace, the majority of ChatGPT use is personal, not professional. According to OpenAI’s study of more than 1.58 million ChatGPT conversations, 70 percent of interactions are non-work related. People are using AI for everything from daily tasks to practical advice. It has become a go-to resource for information unrelated to work. 

    OpenAI categorizes AI interactions into three modes: asking—seeking information or advice, doing—producing tangible output like a summary, and expressing—personal reflection or leisure. The study found that workplace use of AI is more targeted, with professionals primarily turning to it for “doing” tasks such as drafting or editing content, coding, and handling administrative work.  

    More than half of all work-related prompts focus on generating a specific output rather than seeking insights. Anthropic’s data supports this trend. More than three-quarters of enterprise use of Claude via API is automation-focused. This means organizations use AI to complete tasks from start to finish with minimal human involvement. 

    These findings raise an important question for leaders as they plan their AI stacks. Will the tools enhance work or simply help check items off to-do lists faster?  

    Doing is more than simply getting things done 

    In a culture that prizes productivity, AI can feel like a cheat code. However, speed isn’t the only metric that matters. People seem to recognize this in their personal use of the tool. The study found that “asking” messages were twice as likely to be personal than professional in nature. When users are engaged and invested in the outcome, they see a difference between getting things done and truly doing the work. 

    “Doing,” in this context, means staying engaged by thinking through problems and collaborating with others. It’s the kind of work that builds intuition and drives better long-term outcomes. By contrast, handing off tasks to AI without participating may save time now, but it may lead to stagnating skills and weakening strategic thinking muscles. 

    Powerful though they may be, AI tools are best used as support rather than authorities. They can help people spot gaps in logic, sharpen perspectives, and interrogate their point of view. Leaders must be mindful of this when building AI roadmaps. If you want teams to build better products or serve customers more effectively, you can’t foster a culture where AI becomes a crutch or where AI investments are made simply to say they have been.  

    Instead, you should model what it looks like to partner with AI. Use its output as a starting point for sharper thinking and solving specific problems. As AI becomes integrated into work environments, leaders are responsible to ensure that it enhances, rather than erodes, teams’ ability to reason and grow. That starts with thoughtful governance, outcomes-focused application, and the understanding that the goal should be better, more efficient work—not AI for its own sake. 

    Striking the right balance  

    Now is the time for leaders to take a clear-eyed look at how AI is truly being used and how to apply it responsibly. The technology—like all others—is not inherently good or bad. It’s a tool, and its impact depends on how we choose to use it. 

    AI doesn’t need to be feared, nor should it be blindly celebrated. Like any transformative tool, it calls for balancing excitement, skepticism, experimentation, and caution. The more people rely on AI both personally and professionally, the more important it becomes that they can think critically about the things they see and do. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Louise K. Allen

    Source link

  • Science Says 1 Word Will Supercharge Your To-Do List

    Lots of people love their to-do lists. Take my wife: she has several going at any given time. Task lists keep her focused, on track, and for want of a better word, reassured: writing tasks down eliminates any nagging “I hope I remember to do (that)” concerns.

    Other people have a love-hate relationship with their to-do lists. Start the day with ten things on your list, “only” check off nine, and regardless of how much you did accomplish, you feel you failed. Their to-do list helps keep them on track, but it may not make them feel good about what they’ve achieved.

    Either way, to-do lists work.

    But one simple addition can make them work even better.

    A study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that students who spent a moment writing down why a particular topic had relevance to their life, or to the life of a family member or friend, were much more successful than those who did not. In short, they added a “why” to their task list.

    Interestingly, the writing exercise showed the largest benefits for student groups at greatest risk of academic failure, which makes sense: the harder the task — or the less likely you are to think you can achieve it, and therefore are more likely to quit — the more taking a few seconds to actually write down your “why?” will matter.

    It’s hard to stay the course, much less tackle an unpleasant, boring, or difficult task, when it’s “just” a task. Send an apology to an upset customer? Sift through 50 applications to choose three people to interview? Deal with a poorly performing employee? Those tasks are easy to skip, or put off.

    Until you include a “why”:

    • Apologize to the customer because it’s important to me to repair our professional and personal relationship
    • Create an interview shortlist because hiring a new production supervisor will improve our efficiency and costs, and free me up to focus on bigger-picture goals
    • Talk to the employee about his performance because he’s dragging the team down, and because I really want him to succeed

    Here’s a simple example. We have a small second-floor deck with a flat rubber roof underneath and a drain that carries away rainwater. The drain got clogged, debris from nearby trees collected under the deck… I needed to remove the deck boards, clean the rubber roof, patch a small hole that caused a leak into the room below, and put everything back together. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but — in the same way that every to-do list has at least one item you simply don’t want to tackle — for whatever reason, it felt like a big deal to me.

    So I removed a couple of deck boards, found the hole, and patched it. The important part was done: no more water leaking into the garage. But the sub-structure of the deck was rotted, some of the flashing needed to be replaced… and I kept putting that part off.

    Until I added a “why” to the task. Since the deck is off the kitchen, my wife uses it as an herb garden. She likes growing herbs, likes grabbing a little rosemary or basil or parsley when she cooks… it’s fun for her. Once I added a why to my to-do list — “finish the deck so she can enjoy her herb garden again” — I knocked it out that afternoon. 

    Why? Because now the task had relevance to someone close to me, and therefore to me.

    That’s the beauty of a “why to-do list.” The less appealing, the more difficult, the more complicated, the less likely you are to be motivated to start — much less finish — the more taking a few seconds to write down your “why” matters.

    Try it. Add a “why” beside the items on your to-do list that seem hard, or boring, or intimidating. Write down why it matters. Write down how you, or someone around you, will benefit. Write down what you’ll learn. What you’ll gain.  

    Turn your to-do list into a why to-do list: write down the “what,” then add the “why.” 

    And then do the same for some of your bigger goals, those lingering goals that don’t make your to-do list, whose pursuit tends to get sacrificed in the service of other tasks or goals. (Or for doing things for other people; you’re probably a lot better at doing things for others than for yourself.) 

    Write down why you want to start a side hustle, or business. Write down why you want to go back to school. Write down why you want to spend more time with your family. Write down why you want to get healthier and fitter.

    Don’t just make a list of tasks. Or goals. Write down why each item matters. 

    Even though it only takes a moment, the impact on what you accomplish will be dramatic.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    The early-rate deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, November 14, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Jeff Haden

    Source link

  • Why Your Project Management Tool Isn’t Working—and How to Fix It

    Stop managing projects through your inbox and give your team the structure they need to thrive.

    David Finkel

    Source link

  • Deloitte: Banks need overarching vision for AI adoption

    Banks in the United States are continuing their investment in AI, which will have both short- and long-term effects on their efficiency ratios.  Publicly held banks are expected to experience a slight increase in their average efficiency ratio — from 56.3% in 2025 to 56.9% in 2026 and 57.1% in 2027, according to Deloitte’s 2026 […]

    Vaidik Trivedi

    Source link

  • 3 Foolproof Ways to Boost Productivity During the Holiday Season

    The holiday season brings a unique set of challenges for entrepreneurs and small-business owners alike. In my work as a productivity coach, I regularly see people rushing to accomplish as much as they possibly can during the holiday season. 

    In fact, you may feel as if you must complete a year’s worth of work over the course of the final weeks of the year. However, this isn’t about working frantically until the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s. Rather, it’s about working strategically for the rest of the month. If you want to boost your productivity this holiday season the smart way, then use the power of prioritization. Try any one of these methods to boost your productivity levels during the holiday season. 

    Focus on urgent year-end deadlines. 

    You’re eager to finish all those open tasks, projects, and assignments. However, there’s a difference between wrapping up loose ends and trying to force every single open project to completion over the next few weeks. 

    Now is the time to practice strict discernment in work prioritization. Take a moment to review open client rosters, project cases, and administrative files. What absolutely must be finished by the end of the year? Which forms, applications, declarations, files, and updates must be completed before December 31st? 

    Once you’ve made a distinction between what must be completed right now and what can wait until later, it’s time to plan. Create a brief checklist of the priority items that you must complete, and use this as a guide through the remainder of the year. For everything else, make a similar list and schedule items into your calendar or project management program. Just like that, you’ve created a draft work plan ready for January and the following quarter. 

    Create a holiday schedule. 

    It’s not unusual to find overbooked holiday calendars. However, if you want to successfully navigate these scheduling challenges, you must have a plan in place. One thing you can do is create a plan for yourself for potential double-bookings. 

    For instance, if you come across a double-booked entry in your calendar, you can plan to accept one entry and immediately reschedule the other for a date in the near future.  

    Another thing you can do is negotiate different aspects of a meeting to free up time in your schedule. This will need to be done on a case-by-case basis, so feel free to use your best judgement here.  

    Consider scheduling meetings via phone or video call or shortening the duration of a gathering. You might also reschedule non-urgent meetings to early in the new year.  

    Allocate time for review and reflection. 

    Holidays are meant to be spent in the company of others. However, having time for professional thought and reflection can benefit you and your business. Setting aside time for yourself affords you the space to review, evaluate, and process everything happening in the present moment. Even brief periods of time can be helpful during this busy season. 

    Here’s what to do: Open your calendar and locate available time slots over the next few weeks. Now, book a few of these time slots to use at your discretion. You could book a few hours in the morning, block out an entire afternoon, or pepper in several hours’ worth of time during the week. Choose what works best for you and your schedule.

    You may use this time to prepare for the holiday party, wind down projects, review important items, and reflect upon the past year. You can also use this time to wrap up any pressing items before going away on vacation or leave.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Rashelle Isip

    Source link

  • U.S. Bank attributes efficiency gains to AI

    U.S. Bank is seeing operational efficiencies as it deploys AI and invests in technology.  “We are maintaining our expense discipline through sustainable process automation and we are executing on our payments transformation with greater focus and strategic investments,” Chief Executive Gunjan Kedia said during the bank’s third-quarter earnings call today. “The outcomes of our efforts […]

    Vaidik Trivedi

    Source link

  • The No. 1 Hire You’re Overlooking

    Many business owners have an executive assistant. It’s simply common sense.

    As the primary driver of your business, your time is best spent on high-payoff activities like participating in leadership meetings, improving processes that ripple through the company, and networking—not on low-payoff activities like expense reports or managing your inbox or calendar.

    That’s why many business owners have an executive assistant who takes routine tasks off their plate, enabling them to grow their businesses.

    So it’s surprising more companies don’t embrace departmental assistants.

    A departmental assistant is essentially an executive assistant who supports an entire department—whether that’s marketing, sales, finance, or any other cohesive team in your business.

    Let’s look at why this role is worth considering, and the potential payoff.

    The rising need for departmental assistants

    According to Gallup, 64 percent of employees were given additional job responsibilities last year, while 42 percent of companies reported budget cuts.

    When teams are pushed beyond capacity, it results in missed opportunities, slipping client expectations, and top performers starting to look elsewhere. This is backed up by another Gallup poll, citing 68 percent of U.S. workers are either unengaged or actively disengaged.

    Traditionally, businesses might respond by adjusting their targets and dialing back their goals. Of course, that could have a negative ripple effect across the organization.

    Or, they could try adding more key hires to the team. But that approach often adds a significant expense that compresses already pressured margins.

    Forward-thinking business owners are taking a different route: supporting overloaded teams with a shared departmental assistant.

    Research shows knowledge workers spend 41 percent of their day on low-payoff activities. If a departmental assistant could take even a fraction of that —let’s say 1-2 hours a day—off your team members’ plates, imagine the time they’d gain for business-driving activities that move the company forward.

    Departmental assistants in action 

    One reason I have so much enthusiasm for this strategy is that we implemented it in my business, WorkBetterNow.

    Our sales team was at maximum capacity, and the need for a new hire was imminent. That would have been costly, time-consuming, and the ROI wouldn’t be realized for months.

    While we waited to make that hire, we hired Paola to serve as our sales department assistant, taking over important but low-payoff activities so our sales reps could focus on driving revenue. The results have been outstanding.

    Freed from low-payoff tasks, our reps had more time to follow up with clients, reducing our sales cycle by 21 percent. Further, we were able to hold off on hiring a new sales rep for 6 months due to Paola’s support of our team. And not surprisingly, the timeliness and accuracy of our data and reporting has improved by having a detail-oriented administrative professional handling those duties instead of our sales team.

    Ultimately, we accelerated revenue and delayed additional costs, while also keeping our salespeople happy—a win-win all around.

    Another example of departmental assistants fueling growth is at Eastman Cooke, a full-service NYC-based commercial construction firm. On a recent episode of my podcast, Great Talent, Great Business, their CEO Peter Morandi told a story about how his estimating department doubled their output.

    The construction projects they do typically cost millions of dollars. Each proposal involves multiple phases, subcontractors, and detailed material estimates for each proposal, and the margins are razor-thin. An inaccurate estimate could wipe out their profits on a project completely.

    Facing increased demand on their estimating department in 2023, Peter added assistants to their estimating department—freeing estimators to ensure the company is putting out winning and profitable bids. Further, estimate accuracy has improved to the point that they’ve almost eliminated nonbillable change orders—safeguarding their margins and reputation.

    Take action

    So, where do you begin?

    Start with one department that’s under the most pressure. For us and many other companies, that would be sales. A departmental assistant gives your sales team more time for revenue-generating activities without adding a new sales rep.

    On the other hand, there could be departments in your business, like finance or operations that are creating costly bottlenecks. Wherever your team is buried in admin, a departmental assistant can relieve the burden and boost performance.

    If it sounds like a high-risk experiment, it doesn’t have to be. In each case I shared above, the departmental assistants were remote nearshore professionals—proving you can access highly skilled support that helps your business grow without breaking your budget.

    Sometimes, the smartest move you can make as an entrepreneur isn’t a dramatic restructure. Rather, it’s a simple shift in how your team is supported. Adding a departmental assistant could be the hire you’ve been overlooking, but one that could drive significant impact.

    Rob Levin

    Source link

  • This New Salesforce AI Service Could Cut IT Helpdesk Calls at Your Company

    Workplace software services giant Salesforce just revealed its Agentforce IT Service product — an AI agents-based system that offers always on, always available IT support and helplines for its client companies. In a Thursday press release, Salesforce reiterated some of the same arguments made by AI evangelists, promising its use could allow workers and IT staff alike to “spend less time on manual tickets, forms, portals, and searching through knowledge articles, and more time on high-value, strategic work.”

    Even if your company isn’t one of Salesforce’s myriad clients, this system is a little sample of the future, and yet another example of how AI is encroaching on diverse sectors of everyday work life. There’s one caveat to the new tool, though. It still relies on people.

    We’ve all been there: sending a “help!” email to the IT team because some important piece of software or hardware has gone kaput, only to receive a ticket number or case number from an automated system, usually accompanied by a note saying the team will respond “soon,” or, worse, describing a longish wait window like “by tomorrow.” Depending on the setup, and the nature of the problem someone will then show up in your office, or send suggested fixes (which may read like a foreign language to a non-technical worker) by email or a messaging app, or take over someone’s computer via remote access to fix the problem.

    The Salesforce tool, the company insists, is unique because it’s “conversation-first,” and “agent-first.” Essentially the idea is to dump the “ticket” system, and allow someone to make an IT help request via pretty much any platform they’re using, from chat systems like Slack or Teams to email.

    In a demonstration press event, one example featured a new employee who needed to go through their IT onboarding. They began a chat in Slack with an AI “conversation agent,” which verified a few details with the worker, then set to work sending them the relevant documents and guidelines, as well as actually working behind the scenes to, for example, give the worker access to file systems, GitHub code repositories and other information for their onboarding. It’s able to do this because unlike a query-then-response AI chatbot, agent AIs have a degree of autonomy and can perform some digital tasks automatically.

    It sounds like magic, and unlike, say, having a long wait for an IT operative in a remote call center, the system is effectively on 24/7/365. Salesforce also demonstrated that the AI agent system also works in a similar way for IT support people as well, offering answers to technical problems via a chat interface. 

    IT-savvy readers, or perhaps IT-wary ones, may have some worries at this point. It’s one thing to trust a human expert with your computer when, say, an important Excel file you’ve worked on for hours gets corrupted. But AI systems aren’t human, and we know that they can hallucinate fake or incorrect outputs and pass them off as true or reliable.

    When Inc. asked Salesforce about this during a press conference about the new agentic AI IT service, Muddu Sudhakar, Salesforce’s senior vice president and general manager of IT Service and HR Service agreed this was the “most important” question concerning AI deployments today. Then he said the company’s multiple AI agents were trained carefully, and operated within “guardrails” that should keep them in line, and prevent serious errors occurring if, for example, the AI suggested a fix for a user’s computer that actually makes things worse.

    Salesforce also noted that there’s always a “human in the loop” as part of this AI-centric system. Someone who should be able to spot if an AI has made an error, or to whom you can “escalate” the issue if you’re not confident the AI can fix your problem.

    What can you take away from this for your company?

    First, this is a hint of the future. Not just for IT services, but for many business support systems that are likely to operate like this as AI chatbots and AI agents get more powerful. If you contract out to third-party companies for, say, IT or financial service support, then it’s likely that you’ll be interacting with AI agent-based systems soon, instead of humans first. Salesforce has previously released an AI agent product that can work like a sales rep—so you see which way the wind is blowing.

    Second, Salesforce’s human-in-the-loop model is a reminder that while AI tools can boost worker efficiency, they are not perfect and they can make mistakes. (The Salesforce IT model speeds the process, so, the IT team may be able to deal with incoming user queries faster after AI tools do a big share of the initial work.) If you’ve rolled out AI at your business, you should remind your workers that every AI output needs to be checked for veracity and relevance before it’s built into any product — that way you can avoid problematic, or even legal, expensive, AI-induced mistakes.

    Kit Eaton

    Source link

  • Agentic AI market to hit $44.5B by 2030, report says

    The financial services industry is developing its infrastructure along with identifying use cases to deploy agentic AI within its operations.  The agentic AI market is expected to hit $44.5 billion by 2030, up from $7.3 billion in 2025, a 44% compound annual growth rate, according to the “Beyond Prompts: Building Business for the Age of […]

    Vaidik Trivedi

    Source link

  • 1 in 7 Jobs Are at Risk of AI Automation, SHRM Says

    As AI insinuates itself more deeply into our everyday and work lives, a new report underlines the paradigm-breaking impact the technology may have on the job market. A huge proportion of all U.S. workers are at a high risk of being replaced by automated AI systems. This represents a threat that could drive unemployment up and rattling the economy. But a separate report by the World Economic Forum suggests that one way to mitigate against this outcome is a dramatic reskilling and job redesigning effort. All of this news could feed into your plans for deploying AI tools in your company.

    The new report, from the world’s largest HR association, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), warns that 15 percent of all American jobs (just above one in seven, and affecting 23.2 million people in total) are at risk of being displaced by automatic processes, HRDive notes. 

    The types of job that most likely to be affected is one where at least half of the task list can be automated. This includes all forms of automation, including physical tools like robotics as well as artificial intelligence. This means the threat is nuanced, and, as many reports before have shown, some types of job are more at risk than others. For example, SHRM’s report estimates 39.7 percent of software development work is highly automated and at risk from AI, as is a similar share in “mathematical” occupations (financial analysis, perhaps). But just 7.3 percent of the work in the “education and library” professions is automated. 

    The report also suggests that 7.8 percent of U.S. work product — about 12 million jobs — is already at least 50 percent completed using generative AI tech.

    This might raise the specter of mass unemployment, with images not far removed from Great Depression-era poverty and unrest swirling in your head. But SHRM also notes that a “significant majority of employment faces nontechnical barriers to automation displacement.”

    This means that many types of work include processes, preferences, physical issues and so on that prevent the job being automated, and thus protects them from AI—at least for now. These types of work have emphasize “interpersonal skills and/or relatively low-tech tools,” such as “many education and health care occupations.” SHRM says “client preferences are the most common” reason for not worrying about AI encroaching on these jobs: people still prefer dealing with people.

    Another perspective on the AI threat was expressed in a new report from the World Economic Forum, addressing the new AI “dual workforce challenge, of “balancing overcapacity and talent shortages.” The report cites a global survey of C-suite executives, of which 92 percent said they had up to 20 percent “workforce overcapacity,” meaning they have more workers than they need . By 2028 that figure is expected to rise to 30 percent overcapacity by about half of the leaders surveyed. At the same time, 94 percent of the leaders say they face “critical” AI talent shortages.

    The WEF report suggests the issue affects many workplaces already, and the shift is only going to get more pronounced as AI technology improves and becomes more capable and widely used. What was once AI “experimentation” is now “structural disruption,” the report says. 

    The answer to the issue, the WEF says, is “reskilling at scale,” combined with “redesigning roles for human-AI collaboration,” and “embedding workforce planning into core strategy.” The report basically calls for using HR departments to smooth the transition between the “legacy” way of working (without AI) into the modern way, as companies integrate AI. Agentic AI has the promise of “workforce empowerment,” and  can “boost efficiency, resilience and competitiveness,” the WEF thinks while companies “stuck in pilot mode risk falling behind.”

    The WEF thinks it’s time for a dramatic upheaval in the workplace, pivoting around the skills needed to operate AI tools. Think of it as the equivalent of the arrival of PCs and printers in the office: typewriters were no longer necessary, and a whole new skillset among workers of all types was needed, The adjustment required rethinking jobs and also reskilling workers on the new tech en masse.

    What’s the takeaway for you and your company?

    Simply that if you’re deploying AI tools across your company — without the intent of outright replacing any of your workers — you need to make your plans very clear, and communicate the goals you’re aiming for by using AI. Your HR team may also need extra budget, time and direction in order to plan a large-scale ongoing, education program to teach workers how to use AI tools to boost their efficiency. You could also consider upskilling talented workers who’ve had their time freed-up by AI, by giving them expanded roles — an option that could help grow your business.

    Kit Eaton

    Source link

  • Why Saying No Is Key to Being a Highly Effective Leader

    Imagine approving every request that crosses your desk, then discovering you’re booked until 2045. For some good leaders, saying no simply and clearly is just hard. Download a copy of my Saying No guide here. The truth is that saying no when it’s true and necessary is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. It is the way of love-powered leaders. It will also help you create clarity, get everyone focused, and build trust, all of which make for better results.  

    Are you good at saying no?

    When you rarely say no, you end up overcommitting, spreading yourself and your team thin, and losing sight of what truly matters. You no longer have the time and space to lead effectively. There are two common traps that keep executives from saying no and being as impactful as possible. First is the desire to please. Second is the lack of clear priorities. Consider if these apply to you. 

    Trap 1: A desire to please  

    The Problem: You avoid saying no because you worry about being perceived as uncooperative, rude, or selfish. Your fear of disappointing people or damaging relationships blocks you from setting boundaries. The more you try to please everyone, the more you spread yourself too thin, and your ability to focus on strategic priorities diminishes. 

    The Fix: Recognize the importance of boundaries for both you and those around you. Practice saying no respectfully, starting with low-risk situations. You don’t need to apologize or offer excuses—simply acknowledge the request, explain why you cannot take it on, and offer an alternative, if possible. 

    The Win: By saying no confidently, you can create a culture of truth-telling and respect within your organization. Others will appreciate your honesty, and you’ll foster stronger relationships based on trust and clarity. You’ll also reclaim time and energy for the things that truly align with your mission and vision. 

    Trap 2: Lack of clear priorities 

    The Problem: Without a clear sense of what’s most important, it’s easy to say yes to anything that comes your way. You make reactive decisions instead of strategic ones. This causes overwhelm, confuses your team about what really matters, and lets truly important projects fall through the cracks. 

    The Fix: Define your top priorities, those that align with your vision and long-term strategy. It should be a maximum of three. Use them as your decision-making filter when new requests or opportunities arise. If something doesn’t align with your priorities, say no and protect your time for what really matters. 

    The Win: When you say no to distractions, you make space for focused, high-impact work. You’ll have more energy and time to dedicate to the initiatives that move the needle, and your team will benefit from the clarity that comes with knowing where to focus their efforts. 

    3 powerful to improve your ability to say no 

    • Get clear on your priorities. Spend some time this week defining what truly matters to you and your organization. Ask yourself, “What are the three things I should be focusing on to drive the vision forward?” These become your filter for making decisions about where to spend your time. 
    • Practice saying no. Choose one situation where you’ve been avoiding taking a stand—agreeing to unnecessary meetings, under-delegating, or postponing tough decisions. Practice saying no with clarity and respect, even if it’s uncomfortable. Start small and build up your confidence. 
    • Regularly check your boundaries. Take a moment each week to assess how well you’re maintaining your boundaries. Are you overcommitting again? If so, recalibrate. Set a reminder to check in with your priorities and ask yourself if the new requests align with them. 

    Take your next steps now  

    The good news is that with the right strategies and tools, you can break free of the traps and make saying no a leadership superpower. Right now, identify one area where you’ve been saying yes too often. Make a conscious decision to say no. Reflect on how it feels to set that boundary and notice how it shifts your focus.  

    With every no, you’ll make more room for the right yes, for the things that truly matter. Saying no is empowering, and it’s a choice that leads to greater freedom and fulfillment, helping you become a more focused and impactful leader. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Moshe Engelberg

    Source link

  • How Small Businesses Can Break Free From the ‘Efficiency Trap’ | Entrepreneur

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    After decades of working with small businesses, I’ve witnessed a troubling pattern: the harder entrepreneurs try to maximize efficiency, the less efficient they become. This efficiency paradox plagues businesses of all sizes, but it’s devastating for small companies where every resource counts.

    McKinsey research shows that small and medium businesses operate at 50% of the productivity of large firms — a gap that stems from misguided efficiency efforts. Understanding and resolving this paradox can transform how you operate.

    The two types of efficiency

    Here’s a concept from the Lean methodology that changed how I think about business operations. There are two approaches to efficiency: resource efficiency and flow efficiency.

    Resource efficiency focuses on maximizing the utilization of your resources. You build a queue of work to ensure your resources are busy. It’s like having a writer with articles to write, ensuring they’re productive for all eight hours of their workday.

    Flow efficiency optimizes for speed through your system. Instead of building queues, you focus on moving work through your process quickly. Using the writing example, you’d interview someone, have the writer create the article, review it and publish — no waiting, no queues.

    The healthcare system provides a stark illustration of this. In Canada, we optimize for resource efficiency. Specialists are fully booked, CT machines run at maximum capacity and patients wait months for diagnoses. I’ve seen cancer treatment systems operate differently — where patients can see specialists, get scans and receive diagnoses in one day. Their CT machines sit idle sometimes, but patients get answers immediately.

    Here’s the paradox: by trying to maximize resource utilization, we create inefficiencies that slow down our operation. You think you’re being efficient by keeping everyone busy, but your customers are waiting months for what could be done in days. The side effects can be devastating: lost customers, damaged relationships, missed opportunities and consequences that are incalculable.

    Related: 6 Ways to Make Your Business More Efficient

    The hidden cost of context switching

    This efficiency paradox doesn’t just happen at the system level — it shows up in how we structure our work. When we try to maximize resource utilization, we create what I call “efficiency theater” — looking busy while being less productive.

    Consider the hidden cost of context switching. According to research, context switching reduces productivity up to 40%. There’s a mental tax every time you switch between tasks. If you make 50 context switches in a day, you’ve paid that tax 50 times. But if you can organize your day to switch only five times, you’ve reduced that waste.

    This connects directly to those two types of efficiency, revealing the paradox. Resource efficiency minimizes context switching — you batch similar work and stay in your zone. Flow efficiency increases context switching when one person handles multiple steps in the process.

    Despite the context-switching penalty, flow efficiency delivers better results by eliminating other wastes: delays, queues and work sitting idle. The goal isn’t choosing between resource or flow efficiency; it’s identifying and eliminating whatever is hurting your business most. Sometimes that’s context switching. Sometimes it’s customer wait times. The art is knowing which matters more.

    This connects to what Paul Graham wrote in his essay on maker versus manager schedules. When you’re in maker mode, you need long, uninterrupted blocks of time. In manager mode, you’re switching contexts constantly. Most small business owners try to do both simultaneously, creating massive inefficiency.

    I’ve learned this the hard way. When I try to write code in the morning, handle customer calls at lunch, review financial reports in the afternoon and then jump back to coding, I accomplish far less than if I dedicated entire days to specific types of work.

    Identifying waste in your systems

    Understanding this paradox helps you spot waste in your systems. Ask yourself: Why is this taking so long? What unnecessary steps have we added?

    I discovered a major inefficiency in our software development process around branching. We were using long-running branches, working on it for weeks, then trying to merge everything back together. The longer these branches ran, the more problems we encountered. We were trying to be efficient by letting developers work uninterrupted, but we were creating waste.

    The solution was simple: shorter running branches with uncompleted features hidden by feature flags. Now, if a branch needs to run longer, we require daily rebasing. This policy change eliminated hours of integration headaches and reduced our bug count. It transformed our development from resource-efficient to flow-efficient.

    Related: Don’t Waste Money on Unnecessary Spending — Here’s How.

    Balancing improvement with stability

    Some business owners resist change, citing “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.” This mindset can leave you vulnerable to competition. The key is adopting a continuous improvement mentality — not because something is broken, but to stay ahead.

    Think about computer processors. Intel doesn’t wait for its chips to fail before developing faster ones. They know competitors are innovating, so they must too. When Intel failed to keep pace with this philosophy — falling behind competitors like Apple’s M-series chips — we’re watching a once-dominant company struggle for relevance. The same applies to your business processes.

    However, you need the right people. Some team members thrive on improvement and change, while others prefer stability. Both have their place, but in competitive industries, you need people comfortable with evolution.

    The cost of partial work

    Another source of waste is unfinished work. Starting something and not completing it before moving to the next shiny object creates partial work waste. Unless you’re experimenting or researching, unfinished work represents time invested with no return.

    The efficiency paradox teaches us more isn’t always better. The most efficient path involves letting resources sit idle to maintain flow. Sometimes it means saying no to new initiatives to complete existing ones. It means being intentional about how you work.

    Start by examining your operations. Where are you optimizing for busy-ness instead of throughput? Where has context switching become a hidden tax on your productivity? How can you batch similar work together to improve flow?

    Efficiency isn’t about keeping everyone busy — it’s about delivering value quickly and consistently. Once you understand this paradox, you can build systems that serve your business and customers.

    Alykhan Jetha

    Source link

  • U.S. Bank’s efficiency ratio trends down, clocking in at 59.2% in Q2

    U.S. Bank is looking to manage expenses without cutting corners on technology, and its steadily decreasing efficiency ratio is proof of the effort.  Efficiency ratio is a key indicator of financial institutions’ cost effectiveness in their operations.   “We are making steady progress on our medium-term profitability and efficiency targets,” Chief Financial Officer John Stern […]

    Whitney McDonald

    Source link

  • TD streamlines backend ops with gen AI

    TD Bank is prioritizing AI and generative AI in internal operations and aims to study consumer needs before deploying gen AI for client facing operations.  “We’re currently focused on leveraging gen AI for internal operations, mainly employee-facing, human-in-the-loop experiences that lead to better efficiency, better productivity — and all of that ends up benefiting our […]

    The post TD streamlines backend ops with gen AI appeared first on Bank Automation News.

    Vaidik Trivedi

    Source link

  • HumanTouch Launches NavigatorAI LEAD Solution to Revolutionize Government Decision-Making With AI-Powered Insights

    Leadership, Efficiency, and Decision-Making (LEAD) FedRAMP High Authorized SaaS Solution is a management tool providing AI for rapid response, comprehensive decision capability, efficiencies, and value.


    MCLEAN, Va., April 3, 2025 (Newswire.com)
    –
    HumanTouch, a leader in innovative and mission-driven technology solutions for the federal government, announced NavigatorAI LEAD release – an AI-powered, FedRAMP High Authorized decision management platform designed to accelerate government responsiveness and revolutionize executive management and oversight during a time of rising demand and constrained resources.

    NavigatorAI LEAD provides a real-time, centralized “single pane of glass” that transforms how federal leaders visualize data, manage priorities, and make informed decisions – all while supporting a workforce tasked with driving efficiency, optimization, value, and results.

    “In today’s federal environments, speed, clarity, and confidence in decision-making are everything,” said HumanTouch Senior Vice President Kelly Morrison. “NavigatorAI LEAD equips federal leaders with the real-time insights they need to act decisively and drive impact.” With demand to consolidate data, increase transparency, optimize operations, management, and decision-making, the NavigatorAI LEAD solution delivers 360-degree enterprise views of complex data to make defendable decisions quickly, and with the real-time data to back them up.

    • Real-Time, Omni-View Visualizations: Breaks down data silos with centralized visualization tools that integrate agency and public datasets.

    • AI-Driven Decision Support: Delivers actionable insights using intelligent algorithms to track KPIs, detect trends, and improve operational efficiency.

    • Rapid Integration & Scalability: A low-code/no-code architecture ensures fast deployment across agencies, without requiring extensive IT resources.

    • Compliance-Ready: Powered by CORAS, is a FedRAMP High Authorized SaaS Solution meeting the government’s highest security and compliance standards. CORAS is the only small business solution offering with FedRAMP High Authorization.

    Optimizing Management and Decision-Making

    Originally developed to offer a solution for incoming executives with the new Administration to help get their hands around their respective portfolios and increase the speed to effective and optimized management and decision-making, NavigatorAI LEAD now scales across multiple mission-critical use cases – from performance monitoring and workforce planning to predictive analytics and “what-if” scenario modeling.

    “LEAD gives Agency Executives the power to make strategic decisions based on current, comprehensive data – not last week’s reports,” said Moe Jafari, CEO of HumanTouch. “NavigatorAI LEAD offers a future-ready AI solution for Leadership Teams to manage its leaner workforce, address staffing shortages or reductions to contracts and workforce (RIFs) and evolving public service demands. It will support agencies’ shift from reactive problem-solving to proactive, data-informed leadership – ultimately saving time, reducing costs, and improving mission outcomes.”

    NavigatorAI LEAD is available now for government agencies and system integrators. To learn more or schedule a demo, visit www.humantouchllc.com or contact info@humantouchllc.com.

    Source: HumanTouch, LLC

    Source link