Four tips to help you save time and improve productivity with G Suite
To a greater or lesser extent, we all waste some time at work even if we are at our desks all the time. Whether it is answering a call from a family member, checking e-mails or cell-phone messages that are not strictly related to our jobs, or being tangled up in a document that we can’t manage to get just right.
It is not a question of compensating one thing with another, but if we use G Suite, perhaps we can recover some of our productivity with little effort. Would you like to know how? Here are four clues:
- Taking less time in responding to emails
According to a study by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), the average user spends 13 hours per week writing emails. What if we took advantage of Gmail’s Smart Reply function to reduce this time? You can find it in your Gmail and Allo inboxes, and it is very easy to try: when you receive an e-mail the tool will suggest three possible answers after analysing the content of the message received based on machine learning technology.
Occasionally, one of these three options may even be the adequate reply, depending on the e-mail message. In fact, Google has noted that at least 12% of messages received can be answered in this way. In addition, it is available in multi-language versions on both iOS and Android devices.
- Taking advantage of automatic smart document formatting
Producing a good presentation (with details, such as centring images, the selection of the font for the texts) is a time-consuming task and detracts from the true mission of the document: to share knowledge.
This is why we always try to build on a previous document, or we use predefined templates that are already available. Now, you can save time by taking advantage of the ‘Explore‘ tool in Slides (also available in Docs and Sheets) that provides you with ideas, design tools, and recommendations to create your documents faster and better. How? By applying machine learning technologies again. It is like having an analyst, a researcher, and a designer side by side helping you finish your work on time.
- And what if you also get some help with the content?
In addition to the design suggestions we saw above for Slides, when you use Sheets you only have to type in a question about your data and the ‘Explore’ tool will use natural language processing (NLP) to translate your question into a formula and give you an answer immediately. You can’t ask for more, can you?
And if this were not enough, in the case of Docs, the ‘Explore’ function analyses the content of what you are working on and suggests documents from your own Drive or Google related to what you are writing, images you can insert, as well as any other type of content; all while you are editing on your iOS or Android device or in a web browser.
- If you are unable to find a document…
Then, you are not making the most of Drive. According to reports by McKinsey, employees often spend about two hours a day looking for documents. Through the use of artificial intelligence, Quick Access in Drive is capable of predicting and suggesting documents just when you need them. Natural language processing will, once again, allow you to use your own way of expressing yourself to find documents, without having to apply the complicated logic of machines or speak like an Indian.
Another way to prevent losing or misplacing documents is taking advantage of Team Drives. This system enables you to create centralised and shared repositories among various people (you can also restrict privileges when necessary), so you don’t have to worry about following-up new files or granting privileges each time you upload something to Drive.
If you are not a G Suite user, these ideas should encourage you to try it, at least. Contact us without obligation, and we will show you how you can take advantage of all that Google has prepared for companies like yours. Maximum collaboration, mobility and productivity.
