Techblog
Can AI really revolutionise SME business? Evie.ai thinks so
Founders of Evie.ai, an AI scheduling assistant, talk about artificial intelligence technology and how it can benefit small business.
According to a study published in 2017 by the Boston Consulting Group and MIT Sloan Management Review, 61% of the organisations interviewed saw developing an AI strategy as urgent – and about 70% believed that AI will remove the mundane tasks from their jobs, leaving more time for the most challenging and rewarding work.
Evie.ai is one such company that hopes its AI technology will help improve productivity for all kinds of businesses. After all, Evie.ai’s co-founder Lee Jin Hian was getting frustrated that he was spending one whole day a week just rescheduling meetings. “Planning out the different meeting timings with people who worked in different time zones was really time-consuming and it took our attention away from more important and pressing tasks.” So the engineer with an interest in AI thought of a solution.
That solution was Evie, a virtual artificial intelligence (AI) scheduling assistant. Evie.ai was founded in 2013 by Mr Lee and co-founder Praveen Velu. Since then, the company boasts over 3,000 users across 48 countries in different industries including tech startups, venture capitalist firms, as well as consulting and recruiting companies.
“With Evie, a lot of time is saved on administrative tasks – and that time can be spent on things that drive value for the company like following up on sales prospects. It gives you your time back,” says Mr Lee.
So how does Evie work? When arranging for a meeting with someone, simply CC Evie in the email. Evie will check against your calendar for available timings, pick a time, and takes care of the back and forth in arranging a suitable meeting time. As Evie is used more, she learns the user’s preferences and will schedule meetings accordingly.
The scheduling assistant also understands natural language so there is no need for a specific text command to activate Evie. “Many people actually think Evie is real because she sounds like a human. When they turn up for the meeting, they sometimes ask if Evie is going to join that meeting,” says Mr Lee.
While Evie started out as a scheduling assistant, she is now able to carry out more tasks. This includes setting reminders as well as to-dos. To-dos are more useful for post-meeting follow-ups. Simply email Evie with your post-meeting notes that include people to follow up with and actionable items – and Evie will check in with you as well as follow-up with other members of the meeting.
AI can indeed revolutionise how companies, both big and small, conduct business. “You spend more time on things that matter,” says Mr Lee.
Here are two ways that SMEs can benefit by using Evie:
1. Improving sales prospects
A lot of time in sales is spent sending up follow-up emails to prospects. Worse still, managing sales prospects can be difficult because following up is often forgotten as other tasks take priority.
“What happens is that you lose a potential customer because you did not follow up,” says Mr Lee. Evie takes care of that. Once you email a potential customer, Evie takes care of the rest by sending follow-up emails and even creating and sending out these invites.
“It just saves you a lot of time to actually chase other potential prospects instead of chasing your current ones,” said Mr Velu. You also don’t have to waste your time figuring out time differences if your customers are overseas – Evie works well with time zones as well.
If the potential customer doesn’t reply, Evie sends a maximum of three chaser emails. Then, she will ask you if you would to continue trying to schedule a meeting with that prospect.
There is also the added professionalism that businesses gain with an assistant. “Having an assistant just makes you look good and if you are trying to make a sale, it does make a difference as you simply look more professional,” says Evie’s product manager Virginia Yang.
2. Human resources
If you’re looking to hire, a lot of time is often spent going back and forth with interview candidates about the time of the meeting and then creating and sending out invites. Evie does all of that for you. If you have 20 resumes of candidates you want to follow up with, simply send an initial email to each of these candidates, and Evie takes care of the rest and leaves you to focus on higher-level tasks.
Evie, as an AI assistant, essentially works in tandem with you – just like a real assistant.
Summary
- Employees spend a lot of time doing mundane tasks like scheduling meetings, which decreases productivity
- Artificial intelligence (AI) technology can handle these jobs and thereby increase productivity
- Evie.ai is a virtual AI scheduling assistant with over 3,000 users in 48 countries
- Evie can help small businesses improve sales prospects and increase human resource productivity