The November 30th, 2022 release of ChatGPT quickly stoked a race for the best generative AI. We now have a wide group of players, with OpenAI, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, and Microsoft Copilot leading the way. Microsoft is building data centers right here in Wisconsin to propel its AI initiatives even further. Nobody would argue about the growth and prominence of AI in 2025.

As business leaders, we are all looking for ways to improve ourselves and keep up with innovation.  In the SMB market, we see more AI integration with line-of-business applications.  ERP, accounting, CRM, and other systems are being built in AI to help accelerate daily tasks.  Business Process Automation solutions are also bringing AI to bear on daily workflow.

Another way business leaders take advantage of AI is by using some of the native tools, most commonly Copilot or ChatGPT. The power of these tools has grown significantly since the release of ChatGPT.

To illustrate that, here are Five Practical Ways to Use AI based on my experiences over the last few months.

1. Ask AI to answer questions based on the content you provide. We work with many customers to help them meet compliance requirements like CMMC, HIPAA, or PCI.  I recently had a prospective customer ask about a compliance standard that was pretty specific to an industry we have not worked in recently.  I could have asked AI to look up that standard, but I Googled the standard and found the government PDF document detailing the requirements. I was looking at reading a lengthy document, so instead, I uploaded it to ChatGPT and then asked ChatGPT to summarize the necessary controls based solely on the document.  It summarized the controls in about 20 seconds to a format I could read in under a minute.  I quickly recognized that these controls were the same as other frameworks I am already familiar with and provided a written explanation to build confidence with our prospective customers.  In this case, AI saved me hours of reading and work and allowed me to be the expert I am by quickly digesting the information it summarized.
2. Generate a spreadsheet based on guidelines. We have been working on our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) for our Business Process Automation (BPA) line of business.  The goal is to narrow our focus, improve our messaging, and help more companies with BPA. The ICP identifies the number of employees, revenue, target contact, the problem we solve, and more for each vertical market.  This seemed like a daunting task, and I was having a hard time getting started.  I decided to see what AI could do for me.  I asked the chatbot, in this case ChatGPT for what I needed.  I gave it the vertical markets, sizes, and other known details.  I described our Business Process Automation solution and some of the problems we solve.  I asked it to create a spreadsheet and suggest the other categories I should track for an ICP.  I also asked it to fill in the unknown blanks to the best of its ability with the information it thought was relevant.  It completed this process in several minutes and presented a download for me to open in Excel.  The spreadsheet was extremely useful and got me started on the project, and even though the data was not perfect, it put me ahead by probably 6-8 hours of work, if I had done it all independently.
3. Creative work.  For our company meeting to kick off 2025, I wanted to start the vision presentation in a different way. I had the idea to present the vision in a series of headlines.  I asked AI for help creating a fun, creative newspaper headline for each of my vision items.  It created some fun headlines, as if it was January 1st, 2026. I made some tweaks, but it helped expedite the creative process. I added some fun names for the fictitious newspapers displaying our vision headlines.
4. Brainstorming. I’ve used AI for multiple brainstorming exercises.  It is almost like having someone in the room with you to throw out ideas and get the creative juices going.  We do a word of the year every year for CTaccess. AI did a great job of suggesting words that represent a concept, and by prompting it well and letting it know that I was trying to come up with a word of the year to use in a business setting, it narrowed the results in an even more compelling way.  I have also asked it to help with marketing content.  I provided our current marketing language and asked how it could be adjusted to fit a particular target market.  Using it to help generate ideas is great, and giving it as much context as possible really improves the results.
5. Create a focused expert. Most AI platforms will allow you to create your own GPTs.  The value of this is that you can create a GPT with a different background for each task.  For instance, I created a CTaccess Marketing Maven and uploaded the CTaccess Messaging Guide that our marketing company created for us.  I also uploaded some of our marketing collateral.  I then saved the GPT and told it always to use that information as a launching pad when I am using that GPT.  Now, I have a marketing expert who never forgets our messaging, answers questions, and creates content based on that context.  AI is pretty amazing stuff!

You may already be familiar with these tools or haven’t really ventured into the AI world yet.  If you haven’t, I would encourage you to try it. Sign up for a Microsoft Copilot or Chat GPT subscription and see what you can make happen.  Reach out (scotth@ctaccess.com) if you want some help, or email me your ideas or success stories.

Scott Hirschfeld

Scott Hirschfeld is the President of CTaccess, a Brookfield IT support company that has been helping businesses stop focusing on IT and getting back to doing business since 1990. Under his leadership CTaccess provides the business minded approach of larger IT companies with the personalized touch of the smaller ones. Connect with Scott on LinkedIn.