Boost productivity with the best AI tools for business

Real talk: How much time do you actually spend on the interesting parts of your job? If you feel like the most boring bits are taking over your workday, you’re not alone. Research from Slack reveals that desk workers spend 41% of their time on low-value, repetitive tasks. That’s a big chunk of the workday, gone—and without much to show for it.

With the right business AI tools, you and your team can cut down on humdrum tasks and refocus your energy on the good stuff. In addition to making your job more enjoyable, AI can make you more productive. Our research shows that of professionals using AI at work, 80% have seen improved productivity.

But as the AI software market quickly saturates, it can be difficult to pick the right solutions for your team. Let’s dig into some of the best AI tools for business so you can make the most informed choices for your company.

What to look for in a business AI tool

Most business leaders integrate AI into their companies for one key reason: efficiency. Any AI tool worth its salt should make your job easier by automating repetitive tasks or streamlining tedious processes. As a result, you’ll have the freedom to focus your time and energy on your most important (and interesting) responsibilities.

But to maximize productivity, you’ll need the right tool. If the solution you choose is clunky, complicated or incompatible with your existing tech stack, it could wind up clogging your team’s workflows rather than making them more efficient.

As you evaluate your options for AI platforms, keep an eye out for these green flags:

Customization

You know your business best. You know what works and what doesn’t, and you already have effective processes in place. The right AI solutions should improve those processes, not require you to overhaul them entirely.

The best AI tools fit into your business, not the other way around. Look for customizable AI platforms that can easily adapt to your team’s existing workflows.

Data security and privacy

Efficiency doesn’t mean much if you aren’t protecting your employees’ and customers’ data. Security should be non-negotiable for any software, including AI platforms, used in your company’s digital workspace.

Slack AI, for example, lets you control your encryption keys and even revoke access to your data whenever you choose. Slack won’t sell or distribute users’ data for commercial purposes, adding another layer of assurance. Only invest in AI providers that can ensure your data’s safety.

Integration capabilities

Your tech stack might work well as is. You already have a business messaging platform your team likes. Your current project management software gets the job done. Your company’s document sharing app ticks all the boxes. You aren’t looking to reinvent the wheel.

The best AI tools for business integrate with popular remote collaboration platforms so you can speed up your team’s processes within your existing tech solutions. For instance, Slack integrates with dozens of AI-powered apps so you can have the power of choice—without needing to leave the platform your team knows and loves.

Relevance

What does your company actually do? And what do your employees need to succeed? You should consider only AI solutions that make sense in the context of your business. Even the fanciest AI tools on the market won’t have much impact unless they’re relevant to your company and meet your team’s unique needs.

User-friendliness

If you’re looking for an AI tool you can roll out companywide, simplicity is key. Not everyone is a tech wiz, and a platform with a long learning curve can slow things down while your employees get up to speed.

Seek out intuitive, user-friendly AI solutions that can make work easier for everyone, without requiring them to learn a whole new skill set or a convoluted program.

AI tools for better remote collaboration

Remote work may seem standard at this point, but in reality we’re still getting the hang of it. Companies with distributed teams continue to refine their remote collaboration strategies.

Strong AI tools can support communication and collaboration among distributed team members. Check out the following platforms, all available in the Slack App Directory.

Conclude

Use Conclude to create and customize workflows to manage support tickets, incidents and bug reporting. AI features include email summarizations and translations. AI-powered email summarization generates a brief, editable email summary detailing the highlights of an issue and automatically opens a ticket in Slack. With email translation, you can automate the translation of emails into 60 languages.

Grain

In digital meetings, it can be tough to participate while also taking notes (and it can be easy to forget note-taking altogether). Grain automates meeting notes by using AI to record, transcribe and summarize video conferences. It even automatically sends meeting notes and summaries to your chosen Slack channel so no one’s left in the dark.

Otter.ai

Otter, another remote meeting tool, keeps everyone in the loop by delivering automatic, real-time updates to users before, during and after meetings. It takes notes and captures slides during meetings, and the app notifies users when they’re mentioned or assigned an action item in an Otter conversation.

Polly

Use Polly to drive employee engagement with forms and surveys, either asynchronously or during meetings or virtual discussions. It automatically gathers feedback and conducts check-ins so you can easily track employee opinions, answer questions and get status updates.

AI tools for company culture

Just as with collaboration, remote teams are still figuring out how to foster a strong, supportive company culture in their digital workspaces. AI can help facilitate communication, celebrate wins and add a personal touch to your remote-friendly workplace.

AI Profile

Design employee profiles that showcase each individual’s strengths and work style, among other details. AI Profile can even automate birthday notifications (no more forgotten birthdays!) and coffee chats, arranged by AI according to the interests employees mention in their profiles.

Anonymous Feedback by Wrenly.ai

Wrenly promotes the employee experience through surveys, suggestion boxes and even a whistleblower portal. The app provides an anonymous, trustworthy space for users to share their opinions, generating automated summaries powered by ChatGPT. It aims to boost culture by giving employees a safe space for their authentic thoughts.

Celebrations

For every employee, birthdays and work anniversaries happen each year, and Celebrations by Airspeed can help you keep track through automated notifications. You can even deliver celebratory cards through the app.

Effy AI

Leaders should never cut corners on performance reviews, but that doesn’t mean the process needs to be complicated or tedious. Effy lets you conduct reviews and gather employee feedback directly in Slack.

Harriet

Transparency is key to a strong company culture. Harriet empowers company leaders to be forthcoming about company policies and procedures with its AI assistant. Employees can ask Harriet about company policies, everyday HR tasks and even personal goal-setting.

AI tools that help you operate more efficiently

There’s that word again: efficiency, the name of the AI game. Below we list some of the best AI tools for business efficiency and productivity, particularly at remote and hybrid companies.

Airtable

If your company already uses Airtable to manage projects and workflows, you can also leverage its Slack app to automate certain tasks right in Slack. For example, Airtable can automatically send a message whenever someone makes a change to a piece of content in your database, including a link to the updated content for your review.

Asana

Asana’s work management software integrates with Slack so users can convert Slack messages into Asana tasks and receive notifications for tasks they’re following or assigned to. Slack Workflow Builder automates common processes and workflows, and you can layer Asana with Workflow Builder in Slack to get the most out of it.

Box

Collaborative document sharing is a piece of cake with Box’s Slack integration. Slack lets you access Box content directly in the Slack platform, while the content continues to live in Box. You can even automate uploads to Box so you never lose another important document.

AI tools for content and image generation

Generative AI (GenAI) is all the rage right now. It creates—or generates, as its name implies—text, images, video and audio content, often instantly.

Whether this reality excites or scares you (or maybe a bit of both), GenAI is worth some consideration. These Slack apps leverage generative AI features to help make your workday a little smoother.

ChatScope AI

ChatScope AI uses platforms like ChatGPT and Dall-E to generate whatever content you need, right in Slack. ChatScope AI can help you create illustrations, produce briefs, or deliver any other type of content so you can skip that tedious step during your busy workday, potentially saving you significant time.

Felix

If you ever have trouble drafting a good Slack message, Felix can help. It’s an AI editing tool that can run spelling and grammar checks on your Slack messages and rewrite them accordingly. The app can even tweak your messages to help them adopt a different tone or translate them into different languages.

Slack comes AI-ready

If your company uses Slack as its productivity platform, you’re already a step closer to effective AI integration.

Slack’s native AI capabilities enable automated thread summaries for easy skimming and detailed, search-based answers to user questions. Slack AI can slash the time you spend catching up on channel updates and hunting for information in old messages.

Plus, Slack integrates with a wide variety of AI solutions from third-party platforms, including all of the tools listed above.

If you’re ready to enlist the power of AI to take your team’s productivity to new heights, give Slack a try and get started with Slack AI.