Ideas and demonstrations on how Google's AI tools can be used in small and medium enterprises (SME), with emphasis on environment, social & governance (ESG) related use cases.
80% of all business workflows can benefit from some level of digitization, AI & automation. The advancements in AI has made developing in-house productivity tools and automated workflows accessible to everyone via "no-code" and "low-code" methods - Google calls them "Citizen Developers". Google Workspace (and Google generally) has an array of amazing integrated tools such as NotebookLM, Appsheet, Sites, Apps Script, etc. which are all primed to unleash the full potential of AI using Google Cloud Platform's Vertex AI infrastructure.
The aim here is to mainly use ESG as a demonstration for real use cases for AI, apart from other general uses. Why ESG specifically? Well generally this is still relatively "new" in most parts of the world with a young team, especially for SME's. Thus, there is more flexibility to explore new ideas & create new workflows that natively integrate AI.
If you are a part of a SME, or even part of large corporation looking to explore AI use cases within the Google Workspace ecosystem, this might be insightful for you. Stay tuned!
YOUR DATA, YOUR TEAM & YOUR AI
Below are some sample use cases which are technically feasible on current Google stack. Some are still work in progress & more will be added as I test and fine tune the concepts.
GOOGLE AI 101: GEMINI CHAT & GEMS
This is the most basic step for anyone to onboard their AI journey with Google - linking up Google tools such as Gmail, Drive, Docs, Calendar, Docs, Keep, Tasks to Gemini chat application so that we can interact with these apps using natural language to improve productivity and streamline workflows. On top of that, Gems can be used to create micro AI experts (i.e. bots) that can be instructed to perform repeatable basic tasks / prompts with Gemini, which can also be linked to your Google Apps.
Ideal for: Everyone.
Tools:
CREATING AI "PODCASTS" FOR INTERNAL KNOWLEDGE SHARING SESSIONS
Internal knowledge sharing sessions play crucial role to break the ice and inter-department/team silos, on top of bringing the entire company towards a common goal. Google NotebookLM's Audio Overviews features can be used to create routine company internal "podcasts", where 2 AI hosts will be discussing all necessary happenings of the company. This is a fun application of AI that can also help to nurture a company's culture if done strategically.
Ideal for: HR team, internal communications team.
Tools:
AI CHATBOT FOR ESG COMMUNICATIONS
AI chatbots are all the rage now, and can play essential roles in internal and external communications. Anyone can easily build custom AI chatbots to be integrated with websites, etc. with Google's no-code Conversational Agents tool. This can be about anything - HR policies, employee directory, project details, etc.
Ideal for: HR team, Project Team, ESG team, etc. Technically anyone can create an AI chatbot for any use case - as long there is a need to communicate information/data/instructions to others.
Tools:
AI ASSISTANT: BUILDING A GENERAL SECRETARY
Build an AI assistant using low-code method that provides a voice note summary on measurable KPI's on a regular basis (daily, weekly, etc.), so that the "boss" can listen to them on the go. This AI can also highlight any anomalies and problems that occurred, so that the "boss" is in the know. This AI checks through master KPI list, sends reminders to PIC if data is not updated on time, takes the data and generates a AI voice summary, and mails it to the boss. This is not specific to ESG.
Ideal for: Managers / team leaders looking to get quick update on regular measurable KPIs on the go.
Tools:
BUILDING AN OCR APPLICATION USING APPSHEET FOR CUSTOM ENTERPRISE USE CASES
Build a custom Optical Character Recognition (OCR) solution using Appsheet to capture real-time information from documents, receipts, or invoices into structured data instantly using Google tools such as Sheets, Appsheet, Apps Script and Cloud Vision AI.
Ideal for: Business owners, citizen developers, team leaders looking to automate and streamline repetitive workflows with low-code automation.
Tools:
GHG EMISSIONS DATA COLLECTION (coming soon)
Easily build phone / web applications with no-code using Google Appsheet to collect Green House Gas (GHG) emissions from sources for key materiality aspects such as Energy, Water, Waste & Materials.
Ideal for: Enterprises looking to digitalize their emissions data tracking from the source.
Tools:
GHG EMISSIONS LIVE DASHBOARD (coming soon)
Data collected from above can be used to build "live" database using Google Sites with no-code in no time.
Ideal for: Managers / owners looking to visually keep track on the overall KPIs for ESG.
Tools:
AI ASSISTANT: GHG EMISSIONS STATUS UPDATE (coming soon)
Build an AI Assistant using "low-code" method that will check if regular tasks are done, send reminders if not, and come up with automated email summaries, voice summaries and also highlight any anomalies.
Ideal for: Managers looking to keep track of task progress.
Tools:
AI AGENT: VENDOR ESG COMPLIANCE (coming soon)
Set up a standard documentation template for vendors in Google Cloud, build an AI Agent that communicates with vendors to check on the ESG related KPI (policies, plans, targets) on a regular basis, updates the status in a master checklist, automatically send reminder emails, create summary email / note to sustainability team so that they are kept up-to-date on this. The idea is on a higher level status monitoring agent, however more advanced features can technically be added, such as perform analysis on vendor documents to extract compliance details, etc.
Ideal for: Enterprises want to check, update & follow up on their supply chain's ESG commitments.
Tools: