Introduction to AI for SMEs and NGOs

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to revolutionize industries, small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can also make use of the opportunities to harness these technologies. This guide provides practical tips for SMEs and NGOs to utilize AI to enhance their efficiency and suggests affordable AI tools that can assist the areas of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Marketing, and Design.

AI Tools for Marketing

Marketing, particularly through social media and other digital communications, can significantly benefit from AI technologies. These tools can automate tasks, personalize outreach, and optimize content, making them ideal for small businesses with limited resources. Here are a few tools that you can start with:

• Buffer: Buffer offers powerful automation tools for social media management, allowing businesses to schedule posts, analyze performance, and manage all their accounts from a single platform. This tool is particularly user-friendly and affordable for small businesses.
  
• Mailchimp: Known primarily for email marketing, Mailchimp has expanded its services to include AI-driven marketing automation. This can help small businesses target their communications more effectively and manage campaigns with ease.
  
• Hootsuite Insights: Powered by AI, Hootsuite Insights offers real-time data on social media trends and public sentiment, helping businesses tailor their digital marketing strategies more accurately and responsively.

AI Tools for Design Support

For SMEs or NGOs needing assistance with creating logos, promotional materials, and other design elements, AI can provide quick and cost-effective solutions.

• Canva: Canva uses AI to streamline the design process, offering templates and design elements that can be customized to create professional-looking graphics for social media, flyers, business cards, and more.
  
• Looka: Looka is an AI-powered logo maker that generates brand logos based on user preferences in style, color, and icons. This is a great tool for businesses looking to establish a visual identity quickly and affordably.
  
• Vistacreate: Formerly known as Crello, Vistacreate provides tools similar to Canva, with a focus on creating visual content like social media posts, videos, and other promotional materials easily.

AI Tools for Customer Relation Management 

AI can also help SMEs and NGOs save time in customer relation management through automating customer interactions through chatbots that handle inquiries and complaints, analyzing customer data, or through personalized email marketing that adapts the content based on user behavior and preferences.

• Zoho CRM: Zoho CRM offers AI features through its Zia AI assistant, which helps predict trends, automate tasks, and provide sales insights. It’s designed for scalability, making it suitable for small businesses that anticipate growth.
  
• HubSpot CRM: HubSpot provides a free CRM that is great for small businesses. It includes features enhanced by AI, such as email scheduling, meeting booking, and lead and pipeline management.

The Need for Empathy in AI Implementations

While AI can handle many tasks, it lacks the human touch needed for empathy, which is crucial in customer interactions and in understanding nuanced human behaviors. For instance, an AI system might analyze customer feedback as negative or positive but may miss the underlying tones of frustration or delight that can be critical for relationship management. Organizations should balance AI automation with human oversight to ensure that customer service remains genuine and empathetic. Training AI models on a broader spectrum of emotional data or using sentiment analysis tools can help, but they aren’t replacements for human sensitivity.

More Tips on Using AI Tools Effectively

Here’s more tips on how SMEs and NGOs can start integrating AI:

• Assess and Identify Needs: Pinpoint areas within your organization where AI can have the most impact, such as customer service, data analysis, or administrative tasks.
  
• Select Suitable AI Tools: Choose AI technologies that fit your specific needs. For example, if improving customer engagement is a priority, tools like Salesforce Einstein for CRM might be beneficial.
  
• Establish Clear Objectives: Set achievable goals with AI, such as reducing email response times from 24 hours to 3 hours.
  
• Educate and Train Your Team: Provide resources and training so your staff can effectively utilize AI tools. Online courses or partnerships with AI experts can be valuable.
  
• Learn how to ask effective questions on AI tools: When dealing with AI, it’s important to ask specific and detailed questions to get the most useful answers.
  • For example, instead of asking a broad question like “What do customers think of our service?”, a more detailed question could be “How have customer satisfaction ratings for our new product line changed over the past three months?” This specificity helps in drilling down into the data to fetch actionable insights.
    
• Start Small and Scale: Implement AI solutions on a small scale first, evaluate performance, and then gradually increase their use based on the results.
  
• Measure Outcomes: Track how well AI solutions meet your objectives and adjust your approach as needed.
  
• Adapt and Stay Updated: AI evolves rapidly, so keep learning about new technologies and methods that could benefit your organization.

Conclusion

For SMEs and NGOs looking to implement AI, the key is to start with a clear understanding of both the potential and the limitations of AI technologies. By focusing on specific applications, balancing automation with empathy, and scaling efforts based on success, these organizations can leverage AI to not only survive but thrive in the digital era cost-effectively.

The article was drafted by Robin Wong, a Business Strategist/ Advisor who has been supporting FSI’s community of entrepreneurs and currently is one of the mentors of FSI’s Mentorship Program for Ethnically Diverse Entrepreneurs. Robin made use of ChatGPT-4 to write this article, which he found extremely useful and highly recommended for businesses to assist with research, customer service, content generation, and more, thanks to its advanced language understanding and generation capabilities.

The post Harnessing AI: Practical Guide and Tips for SMEs and NGOs appeared first on Foundation for Shared Impact.

Resources to help you build mental resilience

Brought to you by Ascension Associates

Are you looking for resources to help you build mental resilience for your personal and professional life?

Check out these resources by Ascencion Associates, established in 2018 by Larraine Chang as a Hong Kong-based boutique management consultancy supporting clients in Asia and beyond through sustainable business model design, leadership development, team coaching, strategy facilitation, and executive search.

powered by Advanced iFrame

Special Offers to the FSI Community

Ascension Associates offers a 10% discount for FSI community members for its MasterClass series (per class ticket price around 250HKD). For more information on upcoming classes and events, please directly reach out to Larraine Chang at lchang@ascension-associates.com.

Please share any feedback you may have!

What did you find helpful, or how can we improve? What other kinds of resources do you think we should be providing?

Email (Optional)

Please let us know your email if you'd like us to follow up with you or contact you separately!

Submit

The post Resources on Building Resilience appeared first on Foundation for Shared Impact.

Introduction to Notion

What is Notion?

Notion is an all-in-one workplace that is versatile enough to be the online collaboration zone of your business, which brings great convenience to the daily operation and internal communication especially when your company adopts a work-from-home policy.

What can I do with Notion?

• Project Management: Notion can help you boost your efficiency with its powerful database system, where you can create checklists, track progress, assign and review tasks, etc. Everything is within easy reach and ready for view on one table.
• Integrate your workflow with other apps: Notion also works well with many popular productivity tools, including the Google toolkits, Slack, and Twitter. This working environment, which is highly integrated with your routine workflow, ensures a smooth transition, and can even bring your productivity to a new level.
• Team Collaboration: You can leave your comments on your teammates’ work and assign weekly tasks, and they will be pushed a notification promptly, which is a basic yet strong system of communication.
• Create public or private webpages: For the final presentation of your team’s work, you can either publish on a publicly accessible webpage or export to pdf format, which extends your achievements to a wider scope of audience and to the face-to-face settings.

Where can I download Notion?

• Notion for Windows & Mac: https://www.notion.so/desktop
• Notion for iOS & Android: https://www.notion.so/mobile
• Notion web clipper: https://www.notion.so/web-clipper

FSI’s Guide to Notion

• Click here to view FSI’s illustrative guide to the key functions of Notion. Topics covered include:
  • Getting Onboarded to Notion
  • Customise Your Workspace
  • Embeds and Connection to Other Tools
  • All about Notion Pages
  • Team Collaboration in Notion
  • Notion Templates

Please share any feedback you may have!

What did you find helpful, or how can we improve? What other kinds of resources do you think we should be providing?

Email (Optional)

Please let us know your email if you'd like us to follow up with you or contact you separately!

Submit

The post Guide to Notion – Build Your Own Workspace appeared first on Foundation for Shared Impact.

What is Clockify?

Introduction

Clockify is a great time management tool for a team to stay organized and efficient, especially when the team members are working remotely. Clockify allows you to track our time spent based on tasks. This function helps you guide future timelines and generally helps you to identify and improve in areas where we may be slow – and celebrate areas where we are extra efficient in.

If you’re using Notion, Jira, or other collaborative platforms, Clockify smoothly integrates with them to make the platforms more seamless and less tedious to utilize. We are not recommending this tool to create any “big brother” system that seeks to track every move of your employees – which it simply doesn’t anyways. Instead, it is meant to help reduce distractions, save time, ensure better planning, prioritization, and support from the management team, and more. Ultimately, research also shows that it enhances teamwork and workflow.

Where to download Clockify

• Mobile app: Android and iPhone
• Desktop app: Windows, Linux, and Mac
• Browser extension: Chrome

How to Use Clockify

Web App Key Functions

• Timesheet – shows you a weekly overview of tasks and allows you to modify the time spent on the task. It also shows the total amount of time spent working on tasks for each day.

• Time Tracker – this is where you log the time for the task you are currently working on. Clockify gives you two options:
  1. Track your tasks with a timer (by simply pressing ‘start’ after inputting the name of the task you’re working on)
  2. Manually add the start/end time for the task.

• You can integrate Clockify with other apps such as Notion, Google Calendar, etc. (See more about this below) You should see a timer button (like the one below) on the site page. Simply click on it to start the time for the task.

• Calendar – gives a weekly overview of tasks with time blocks for each day. You can drag blocks to adjust the time spent on the task.
  • To connect your Google calendar, navigate to Calendar. Then click the link icon beside Teammates.
  • Select Connect Clockify to your Google account.

• Dashboard – shows you an overview of the total time you’ve spent working each day/week and the percentage of time you’ve allocated to your tasks.

• Reports – Summary, detailed, weekly, and shared reports can be generated in this tab. Various filters such as team, department, project, etc. can also be applied.

Integrating Clockify with Other Software

Note that to integrate Clockify with other software, the user should first have a Clockify account and should already be part of the team.

Jira

• Install Clockify for Jira
• Generate API Key to start timer – In order to start the timer on the task/issue, each user has to first generate their personal API key and paste it in the “Clockify API Key” field on Jira

• To Get API Key, navigate to your web app account, click Profile Settings. Click Generate, then copy API key to your Jira ticket. Note: You only need to do this once.

• Start the timer – The timer can be started on Jira or via Clockify apps on browser, mobile, or desktop. To start timer in Jira, click the Start/Stop Clockify field in the specific Jira ticket, click START TIMER then enter details such as Project, Tasks and Tag.

• Stop the timer – The timer can be stopped either on Jira or via the Clockify apps on browser, mobile, or desktop. If the timer was stopped on Jira, a time log will be created and added to the “Time Spent” field (if enabled).

• Add time manually – You may either log your time manually on Jira or open the Clockify web app to do so.

Google Calendar

• Connect Google Calendar – When you go to the Calendar tab on the Clockify web app, click on the connect button and connect to Google Calendar.

• Once connected, you should be able to see both events on your Google Calendar and tasks tracked on Clockify.

• Track Time for Google Calendar Events – You can start a timer by clicking on the event, or copy the whole event as a time entry. You can also click or drag&drop to directly create a time entry.

Notion

Note that the user should have the Clockify browser extension installed.

• Start the timer – Once you have opened your Notion task page on your browser, you should be able to see the Clockify timer button. Simply click on it to start the timer. Clockify will automatically log the task name as the one you have set on Notion.

• Stop the timer – The timer can be stopped either via the Clockify apps on browsers, mobile, or desktop.

Other tips for your team

For employees

• Make it a habit to check your Clockify at the end of the day to fill in missing gaps and/or fix your schedule throughout the day
• As with any new habit, it’s difficult to transform the Clockify tracker into a habit the first couple of days, but once you start to use it more, it should almost become like “second nature” to start/stop times.
• Clockify should only be used as a general estimate of what you do each day – hard to track if someone’s working on urgent or “pop-up” tasks throughout the day. A general rule of thumb, if it takes more than 15 minutes, it should deserve its own time entry.
• The best time to categorize time is when you record it. If you do it right then, you’ll save yourself from much of the hassle later of having to recall this.
• If you sometimes forget to start the timer while working, set up reminders, so the app can send you a notification if it notices the timer isn’t running during your work hours (https://clockify.me/help/time-tracking/idle-detection-reminders#reminders)
• The biggest nuisance with using a timer is starting and stopping it. When you go on a break or are away from the computer, you have to remember to stop the timer. If you constantly go away from a computer but forget to stop the timer, you can enable idle detection. (https://clockify.me/help/time-tracking/idle-detection-reminders#idle-detection)

For your HR team

• The HR team can have a regular audit time once a week to check if all time recorded by your employees is labeled and reported properly.
• The HR team should have admin access to create Projects, Tasks, and Departments for your employees to correctly select the appropriate tasks they’ve completed & record their time.
  • Use Projects to break up the task types that your employees will be working on, and also to assign Departments that will likely work on such Projects. For example:

• Assign Tasks to each Project.
• Set internal guidelines on what time to track, the minimum time to track and record per day, and how to select the projects & tasks. (e.g. Minimum 9 hours including the break, but making task items “breaks” and “trainings and certifications” projects not billable i.e. not counted as working hours)

Other Resources & Links

• Clockify’s helpdesk: https://clockify.me/help/
• Link to Clockify’s Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClKn0rMofAHHbswCgKhWHUA

• Clockify’s official tutorial video

Please share any feedback you may have!

What did you find helpful, or how can we improve? What other kinds of resources do you think we should be providing?

Email (Optional)

Please let us know your email if you'd like us to follow up with you or contact you separately!

Submit

The post How to Use Clockify – Time Tracking Tool appeared first on Foundation for Shared Impact.

What is Slack?

Slack is a flexible and accessible communication tool for your groups and individuals in the groups. You can create multiple channels to communicate with different groups within your organisation or use direct messages to communicate with individuals. In a nutshell, it can replace email and instant messaging for your team, and keep all those communications together in one app.

• Slack can be an effective tool for day-to-day communications but may be less ideal for major decision-making discussions or large-scale projects. Learn more about Slack in this guide and consider its applicability to your team!

Main Features of Slack

Channels

You can create multiple channels for subgroups within your organisation! After the setup, you will see two channels already; #general and #random

(1) #General channel includes everyone who joined your slack team. This is suitable for making announcements and ensures that your messages reach out to everyone!

(2) #Random channel is for whatever you wish to do with everyone in your slack team. You can use it as Q&A board, for team jokes, etc.

Creating a New Channel

(1) Click on the + icon next to ‘Channels’ → Press ‘Create a channel’ → Set the new channel; you can choose between public and private channels.

• If a channel is public, anyone can search the channel’s name from their Slack dashboards to join the channel.
• If a channel is private, uninvited members won’t be able to see the messages in the channel.

(2) Add people to the channel → Completed!

Replying in a Thread

If a big team continues to communicate in one channel, the conversation is likely to be chaotic with multiple topics and members. You can keep the strings of communication organised by using the ‘Reply in thread’ feature!

Messages under threads are not displayed in the main chatroom unless you tick the option to “Also send in #[channel name]”.

Instead, you will see “ # replies’ under the first message, and threaded messages will pop up on the righthand side if you click on ‘# replies’.

Tagging

If you tag a person or a channel, they will receive push notifications for that message.

To tag:

• an individual member, use @username
• a channel, use #channelname

Direct Messaging

The one-on-one message feature is called ‘direct message’ on Slack. You can find it on the tab bar on the left-hand side, and send private direct messages to an individual.

Schedule Your Message

Slack allows you to save drafts of messages, and also to schedule your message to be sent later. Instead of pressing the “Send” button, click on the arrow on the right-hand side to access the option.

Sharing Files

File sharing is essential for effective communication within an organisation, and here’s how you share files on Slack.

(1) Click on + icon in the chatbox → click on ‘Upload from your computer’ → Choose the file you want to share and press ‘Open’ and send.

(2) Now, everyone in the channel can see and download the file you’ve shared. To download the file, just click on the download icon.

Pinning Messages

It may be tedious and time-consuming to scroll up to find certain information buried in hundreds of previous messages. In Slack, if you know that you or others will be coming back to a specific message or document, you can pin it to the channel which is separately stored and can easily be accessed!

(1) Click on the ‘more actions’ (the three dots) on the message you want to pin.

(2) Click on ‘Pin to channel’ → Done! Now, users can find the message on ‘pinned messages’ tab underneath the #chatroom name.

Saving Messages

Another way to remember important messages and information is to save a message.

(1) Hover over the message that you want to save, and this menu box will appear → select the bookmark tag.

(2) The bookmarked messages will be accessible in the “Saved items” section, accessible on your left-hand-side bar.

Advanced Search Functions

Slack’s search function is well-advanced and you can narrow your search with numerous built-in modifiers on Slack!

Settings (Customise your Slack!)

You can customise the interface however you want! You might wonder why that’s important, but you will understand once you realise how much time you spend looking on the page!

Simply, click on your company/project name in the sidebar → click on ‘Preferences’

Don’t be surprised by how many things you can change to make your life easier! You can change the theme, customise the sidebar and how it shows stuff, notifications, etc.

Apps for Slack

Compatibility with external services is what makes Slack a strong communication tool. There are many apps you can download from [Slack App Directory] and the apps will definitely contribute to more effective communication.

Installation process

In order to download & connect external apps on Slack, you need to access the Slack App directory.

(1) Click on + icon next to [Apps] tab

(2) Search for the tools/apps you want to download and click on ‘Add’

(3) You will be redirected to the Slack app directory on your browser. Click on ‘Add to Slack’

(4) Allow the app to access your Slack workspace

(5) Done! You will now see the app in your slack workspace and make use of it on Slack!

There are way too many apps that can be incredibly useful for your team to use, thus we can’t go through all of them with you. Instead, we will show you some examples of how they can help you!

Simple Poll

This is definitely an essential app for you to do simple polls and surveys on Slack!

You can create a poll or a survey within a minute, and it automatically sends them out to the channel you have chosen when creating the poll.

Once you send out a poll, you can click on ‘details’ in the message and set it as a recurring poll (in this case, the above poll would better be recurring if your weekly meeting day changes depending on availability)

Google Drive

File sharing is already available on Slack, but you will have to duplicate the same files to share files in Google Drive. Obviously, if your team uses Google Workspace or Drive to put the team’s work together and on track, you need a better connection between Google Drive and Slack.

(1) If you download the Google Drive app on Slack, you will see “Add from Google Drive” option in the chatbox → Click on it → Select file(s) from the connected Google Drive account → Send the Message

(2) The selected file(s) is now shared in the channel → If other users click on it, they will be directed to the editable Google Drive file in their internet browsers.

(3) You can also create a new Google Drive file on Slack

(4) Fill in the blanks (or not, it’s optional) then click ‘Create’!

Google Calendar

If you and the team members use Google Calendar to manage their schedules, adding the Google Calendar app on Slack would be helpful! Once added, you will be able to check/manage your schedules on Slack too.

Slack entails a great level of compatibility. There are thousands of apps you can connect with, and it highly depends on your team’s choice of external workspace, communication style, work environment, etc. Click Here to see the list of apps on Slack listed by popularity!

Free Plan vs Paid Plans

Free Plan

You can enjoy all the features above without paying, but there are several limitations:

• Only 10,000 messages can be displayed
• The number of third-party apps you can integrate with your Slack Workspace limited to 10
• 5GB of storage in Total
• One-on-one voice and video call
• Standard support

Slack Pro

This is where you start paying (US$6.67/person/month). From this tier, you can custom the retention policies for files and messages shared on Slack: it means that you can set the period after the files and messages will be permanently deleted or keep all shared files for the lifetime of your workspace.

• Unlimited message/file archive
• Unlimited third-party apps integrations
• 10GB of storage per member
• Voice or video calls up to 15 participants + Screensharing
• Slack Connect (ability to create and share a channel with members outside of your own organisation)
• Priority support
• Google Authentication

Additional Readings:

• Slack Pricing plan – https://slack.com/help/articles/115003205446-Slack-plans-and-features
• Slack Tutorials and Resources – https://slack.com/help/categories/360000049063

Please share any feedback you may have!

What did you find helpful, or how can we improve? What other kinds of resources do you think we should be providing?

Email (Optional)

Please let us know your email if you'd like us to follow up with you or contact you separately!

Submit

The post How to Use Slack appeared first on Foundation for Shared Impact.