How Artificial Intelligence Can Help You Better Manage Your Time Make time management easy, and see productivity increase.
By Raj Narayanaswamy Edited by Heather Wilkerson
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Evolving trends in the workforce are encouraging companies to reexamine their legacy ecosystems, and many are discovering that they lack the capacity most businesses today require to manage the modernization and digitalization of their workforce. As a result, these organizations require ongoing disruptive and expensive fixes in an attempt to bridge the gaps left behind from these outdated systems.
Related: 10 Key Pitfalls To Avoid During the Digital Transformation Process
Businesses are also slowly realizing that, in order to manage today's modern workforce, they must use a system of record for time. Between companies' legacy technology, resulting disparate data, and inflexible and unintuitive interfaces, the picture is clear -- time management needs to enter the 21st century. The best time management processes collect the most data while asking the least amount of supervisors and employees, and many organizations are finding that artificial intelligence provides the tools to get there. With features like facial recognition, AI-powered chatbots and intelligent business process management, modern time management solutions can be frictionless, automated and unobtrusive. Artificial intelligence has found a home in today's diverse, mobile and modern business needs -- and leveraging it, organizations can support their workforce modernization and standardization initiatives.
AI can be applied to do the heavy lifting in the process of gathering time data, adding context and connecting it to metrics, which directly results in a more streamlined, centralized system altogether.
New tools of the trade
Advanced intelligent tech allows for automated data harvesting and seamless integration with an existing business structure. Mobile and non-intrusive data capture minimize the need for manual time inputs from employees, and instead automatically harvest time data from a business's ecosystem to tie back to specific deliverables and metrics. With facial identification, employees simply walk up to their time clock and automatically log in through facial recognition. This is fast, simple, and provides the benefits of biometrics without the additional hardware costs. If employees prefer a conversation, they can strike up a dialogue with a chatbot about their time, increasing adoption and accurate data collection.
Related: Simple Tools You Can Use to Manage Your Time and Increase Productivity
Workflows for the wise
Fancy new features like those described above aren't the only thing going for AI. Many managers today sift through the drudgery of time sheets, scouring for exceptions, errors and inconsistencies. Aside from adding administrative overhead, the real danger is in the error and delays that inevitably result from this never-ending manual process. Intelligent workflows simplify business processes by validating data in real-time with built-in exceptions, so supervisors of any department can get visibility where and when it counts. Whether it's approvals, payroll or compliance, companies can increase collaboration and reduce errors dramatically.
Managing in the now
With a wealth of real-time data now readily accessible, businesses are empowered to make important decisions almost instantly. Managers, supervisors and leaders can receive advance alerts and notifications that enable them to make proactive informed decisions with accurate data. With up-to-the-minute information on hours worked, compliance, exceptions and resource availability, errors and wasted time are all but eliminated.
Related: 3 Forward-Looking Mindsets Entrepreneurs Need to Have About AI
To prepare for the next wave of workforce modernization, businesses should be honing in on productivity. To start, measuring it accurately -- and in order to do that, businesses must account for 100 percent of resource time, and tie it back to all outcomes. With the digitization and modernization of time management, businesses are using these AI technologies to empower their employees to directly affect the outcomes. This promotes a system of record for time and work, enabled by artificial intelligence. By leveraging advanced technologies like AI and machine learning into the fundamental time tracking framework, and staying ahead of the curve on cutting-edge tech, businesses can achieve real profitability.
