Companies today have more data than ever before, but their data is only as valuable as the insights it provides to teams. For many companies, data is spread across several systems, channels and gatekeepers. This leaves data inaccessible to teams and unable to offer comprehensive insights into the performance of an organization, departments and projects. Companies also can’t properly run AI when data is siloed like this because the technology needs to easily access data in one place, to learn from and make decisions. In fact, 45% of companies say they haven’t implemented AI because their organization’s data is not yet ready, according to the 2024 Digital Work Trends Report.

Slingshot has been solving for disparate data since its inception by centralizing companies’ data across multiple data sources and systems. By bringing together this data, the work management platform has created an AI foundation for companies, directly in its platform. Now, Slingshot is pairing this centralized data with conversational AI to automate insights for teams, so they can quickly access and analyze data to integrate it into their everyday workflows and decisions.

Quickly understand performance and identify trends to make informed business decisions.

Teams are already bringing together analytics from multiple data sources in Slingshot, including databases and spreadsheets (e.g. Excel and Google Sheets), SaaS systems, Big Data and Cloud data products (e.g. Google Analytics, BigQuery and Snowflake), and financial, marketing and sales tools (e.g. Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot and Marketo).

With Slingshot AI, teams can ask questions in simple business terms and receive an answer in seconds, based on an interpretation of company data. This AI-driven analysis saves teams hours of searching and sifting through data, so they can focus instead on making the data drive value for the business.

For example, teams can understand how their latest marketing campaign performed across different platforms or identify the most recent customer trends from CRM and sales data, without manually going through any of the data. A marketing team, for instance, may ask, “How much did we spend on advertising last year?” or “How is marketing spend distributed by channel?” Slingshot AI will deliver immediate insights and answers based on company data across departments, platforms and channels.

Create dashboards to visualize data.

Teams can also automate multi-source data visualizations to identify trends, assess performance and forecast the next best steps for the business or a given project. When teams ask questions about business performance and trends, Slingshot AI will create visualizations–or charts, graphs and other types of visuals–based on company data. These data visualizations offer teams a holistic view into data so they can quickly understand patterns that are important for their overall performance and strategy.

These automated visualizations can be easily added to a permanent dashboard within Slingshot, so teams can regularly review them and evaluate performance in real-time.

Empower every employee to be a data analyst.

Historically, data has been managed and analyzed by highly skilled data analysts with years of training. Slingshot enables everyday business users-–or employees without prior data analysis experience–to derive value from data.

Slingshot AI analyzes and visualizes every piece of data and puts it into understandable terms for teams. Slingshot users simply have to ask questions regarding their data, and they will receive actionable responses in seconds. This empowers teams to use data in their day-to-day work, because they understand the meaning behind it and can easily use it to make decisions and drive productivity.

Translate insights directly into action. 

Slingshot’s AI capabilities enhance team collaboration and productivity by giving employees better access to both data and discussion highlights.

Data insights and visualizations created with AI can be seamlessly shared with other team members across Slingshot, creating alignment and setting a solid base for discussions and brainstorms. Slingshot AI also enables teams to summarize these discussions and extract action items. For instance, instead of reading through a week-long discussion after being out of the office, a team member can use Slingshot AI to summarize the discussion and understand what they missed in a few minutes. Teams can also automate action items from discussions or meeting notes, and immediately create tasks in Slingshot for team members to complete those action items.

“We’ve spent years building companies’ AI foundations as we created one place where companies can bring together all of their data, and now we’re giving teams the ability to act on that data quickly with automated insights,” said Dean Guida, Founder of Slingshot. “With Slingshot AI, we’re making it easy for every company to be a data-driven organization, to power better decisions, improve productivity, and ultimately, increase business growth.”

Slingshot is available as a desktop app (Mac and Windows) and mobile app (Apple App Store and Google Play) and via slingshot app.io.

Learn how Slingshot AI can unify your business data at the website here.

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The new 2024 Digital Work Trends report, based on research conducted by market research firm Dynata, on behalf of Slingshot, reveals that only 23% of employees feel completely educated and trained on AI. And while 72% of employers say their employees are at least adequately trained on AI, only 53% of employees believe they are. There’s also a significant difference between genders with AI training: two-thirds (66%) of males feel they are adequately trained on AI, while only 44% of females say the same.

Additional findings of the report include:

• Employers believe AI is driving more productivity than employees are experiencing: While more than half (60%) of employers believe that AI is significantly increasing employees’ productivity, only 44% of employees say they’re seeing a significant increase to their productivity with AI. Ten percent (10%) of employees say that AI is not increasing their productivity at all.
• A majority of employees are getting at least one to two hours back in their workday with AI. Seventy-nine percent (79%) of employees say that AI saves them at least 1-2 hours a day, with 37% of employees saving 3-4 hours using AI tools. With the extra time in their workday, 63% of employees are reducing their overload of work to complete tasks in a timely manner, and 54% are using the time saved to re-prioritize and manage their workload more efficiently.
• Many employers say their company’s data is not ready to support AI. Nearly half (45%) of employers say they haven’t yet implemented AI because their company’s data—or information that tracks performance, process, people and profitability–is not ready. For many companies, this means their data is siloed across departments, platforms and channels, and without centralized data, AI cannot run. Data is top of mind for employees too: 32% of employees say their company would be ready to support AI if it offered more training around data and AI.

“The workplace continues to undergo a rapid transformation as we now see more employers implementing AI tools into their businesses to drive efficiencies and increase productivity. While employers have specific intentions for AI in the workplace, it’s clear that they’re not aligned with employees’ current use of AI. Much of this comes down to employees’ education and training around AI tools,” said Dean Guida, Founder of Slingshot.

“AI has the potential to change the way teams work by allowing them to trade in highly repetitive, mundane tasks for more high-level, strategic projects. But the only way to unlock AI’s full potential in the workplace is to properly prepare employees and companies’ overall operations. Employers and employees are certainly on their way, but there’s still a lot more to be done, starting with centralizing data, increasing education around AI and reskilling and upskilling employees through continued training,” continued Guida.

Slingshot’s research is based on responses from 253 adult respondents across four age groups and all 50 states. Part 1 of the 2024 Digital Work Trends Report can be viewed here.

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The post Low-Code Software Provides Productivity Boost Survey Revealed appeared first on Digital IT News.

Slingshot’s Digital Work Trends Report explores the relationship between employees’ productivity and management. The report shines a light on how employees’ productivity and performance are impacted by many of the things they look to their leaders for, including priorities, deadlines, and the amount of work they’re responsible for. The report also reveals a generational divide in the ways employees navigate work and manage as leaders.

“Employees often feel overloaded, unsure of priorities and deadlines, and afraid to say no to additional work–even when they have too much on their plates already. And leaders are left scrambling when employees haven’t been focusing on the highest-value task or miss deadlines after taking on too much. This is all caused by a lack of visibility and alignment across teams,” said Dean Guida, Founder, Slingshot.

The new, inaugural report is based on research conducted by market research firm Dynata, on behalf of Slingshot.

Among the findings:

• Employees are overloaded and unguided–and they’re losing half of their day because of it. Employees say their productivity is most negatively impacted when they have too many projects/tasks on their plate (37%), don’t know what their priorities are (25%) and have no set deadlines (17%). A majority of employees (64%) say they lose at least 1-2 productive hours a day when they don’t have deadlines–with 22% of employees saying they lose 3-4 hours each day. Having to juggle too many projects follows closely, with 62% of employees losing at least 1-2 productive hours a day and 20% saying they lose 3+ hours to it.
• More meetings don’t mean more productivity. More than half of leaders feel the need to closely supervise employees when they are not delivering quality work (69%) or hitting deadlines (52%). But employees feel micromanaged when their boss checks in on them too often (45%) or they have unnecessary status meetings (43%). In fact, 25% of employees say work meetings are the most frustrating interruption throughout their day.
• Generations and genders differ in their approach to determining priorities in the workplace. Nearly half (49%) of Millennial workers (ages 27-42) guess what’s most important when they are not given priorities, while 33% of Boomer workers (ages 59+) and 35% of Gen X + Y workers (ages 43-58) choose what to do. A majority (55%) of Gen Z workers (ages 18-26) say they communicate with their colleagues to identify priorities. Males and females differ in their approach as well: 43% of females communicate with their colleagues to identify priorities while 45% of males say they choose what they want to do.

“Where employees spend their time is where their priorities lie–but this often doesn’t line up with their leaders and the larger goals of the company. Once teams are aligned on goals and objectives, employees are clear on their priorities and expected outcomes and leaders can have peace of mind that the right things are getting done in a timely manner. This is what will drive business results,” continued Guida.

The two-part 2023 Digital Work Trends Report is based on responses from 305 adult respondents working full-time as employees and leaders, across four age groups and all 50 states. View the full Slingshot 2023 Digital Work Trends Report Findings.

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