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Is AI actually saving your business time yet?

There's obviously been an enormous amount written about AI, but I'm more interested in where businesses are finding it genuinely useful in everyday operations.

Not demonstrations or things that might be possible in five years — actual jobs that used to take an hour and now take ten minutes.

Research, marketing, responding to enquiries, producing quotations, analysing information, customer service and administration are obvious areas, but there must be plenty of less obvious uses appearing within individual industries.

Equally, there are jobs where AI still creates more work than it saves because somebody has to check everything afterwards.

What have you actually handed over to AI that has made a measurable difference to your working day — and what have you tried that simply wasn't worth it?

Are customers taking longer to make decisions — or are they simply doing more research before they contact you?

Something that seems to be changing across a number of industries is how much of the buying process now happens before a potential customer ever makes an enquiry.

People can compare companies, products, reviews, specifications and prices without speaking to anyone. By the time they finally make contact, they can already have a very clear idea of what they want.

That potentially changes the role of sales. The first conversation is less about introducing the product and more about giving the customer something they couldn't discover themselves.

I'd be interested to know what others are finding. Are customers coming to you better informed than they were a few years ago, or are you still getting the same kind of initial enquiries?