Google Workspace Debuts AI: Top 6 Use Cases for Gemini in 2024

Generative Artificial Intelligence, or GenAI for short, has become a major tech buzzword of late. Despite being largely explored throughout all of 2023, it reached peak popularity in early June this year, data from Google Trends shows. While some individuals and organizations view AI in general and GenAI in particular as nothing more than a playground, others already reap the benefits of becoming early adopters.

We wrote this article so that Google Workspace customers could stay ahead of the curve and figure out which Gemini AI capabilities have the largest impact potential tailored to their business needs. Remember: if you act now, FOMO will never even get a chance to kick in.

The Tangible Benefits of GenAI

In January 2024, Boston Consulting Group, a ‘Big Three’ management consultancy, released its AI Radar survey, which encompassed nearly 1,500 C-level executives leading firms across 50 countries and 14 industries, and the findings were nothing short of exciting. The report argues that GenAI has everything it takes to:

• Make your workforce 20% to 30% more productive. In order to achieve this, BCG advises that you engage in rigorous selection and testing of various tools while paying special attention to the upskilling initiatives and making sure that GenAI supports your workers in their daily activities. Another tip is to keep deployment costs at bay.
• Allow you to save costs upwards of 10%. According to respondents, this is possible because of productivity enhancements to operations, customer care, and IT domains. There’s a catch, though: to be most successful, BCG encourages companies to reinvest those savings instead of withdrawing them.
• Improve your operational efficiency by 30% to 50%. To realize this benefit, BCG says you need to be ready to reimagine your core functions, establish new roles within the organization, and rechannel your budgeting. A sound idea would also be to run pilots that are capable of scaling up.

What Is Gemini?

Introduced in December last year, Google Gemini is a multi-modal large language model (LLM) developed by the DeepMind arm. Initially, the company offered two primary AI services: Bard for individuals and Duet AI for organizations.

February 2024 marked the big unification when Google brought both services under the umbrella name “Gemini” to properly reflect the underlying LLM, ensure that AI features are consistent across product lines, and provide users with advanced capabilities.

Essentially, Bard and Duet AI were early iterations of the technology that now forms the core of Gemini (please also see Gemini for Google Cloud).

How Can We Use It in Our Organization?

One of Gemini’s strong suits is that it’s Google-native. For a business, that means everything happens inside the tools that your employees already use — think of Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail, Meet, and Drive. Firms already extract value with Gemini for Google Workspace — for instance, a local-favorite sporting goods store based out of the Bay Area has managed to draft its messages 30% to 35% faster, which goes in line with BCG’s estimations.

In this section, we look at Gemini’s relevance for different departments within a single organization.

Analytics

Once it understands all data formats, Gemini can write insight-packed summaries based on pre-defined parameters to automate report generation and free up your analysts’ time for more demanding tasks.

Moreover, instead of writing complex queries, they can ask natural-language questions about their datasets in Google Workspace apps and explore them more intuitively.

Customer Care

Analyzing textual data from customer support interactions such as emails (check out our Gmail tutorial) and chat logs, Gemini can “feel” customer sentiment. Be it frustration, urgency, or satisfaction, support reps get a chance to tailor their communication accordingly.

In the meantime, Gemini identifies the nature of the issue, the product or service involved, and potentially even the reference number or error message. It can also extract keywords to categorize the issue and route it to the appropriate specialist, who, in turn, gains a sneak peek into the customer’s problem before answering. 

For frequently encountered issues with clear solutions, Gemini can help draft automated responses with initial troubleshooting steps or links to relevant resources.

Finance

In the department of finance, Gemini can locate critical figures such as revenues, expenses, and budget items from emails and summarize data from reports stored in Drive, staying alert for any inconsistencies or outliers. These pieces of information are crucial when preparing bigger-picture financial reports such as balance sheets or P&L statements.

In addition, Gemini can categorize transactions based on keywords or pre-defined rules, saving time spent on manual data entry. Speaking of time efficiency, Gemini can also automate routine tasks like creating basic expense reports or generating standardized financial summaries for internal meetings.

HR

With “Help me write” prompts, Gemini can compose spot-on, engaging job descriptions that accurately reflect the role’s requirements. Once those CVs start coming in, Gemini can automate parts of the screening process by identifying keywords and skills based on certain criteria, summarizing candidate qualifications for quicker review, and highlighting potential red flags.

After the offer has been accepted, Gemini can personalize the onboarding experience by generating automated welcome emails and putting together basic training materials tailored to the new hire’s role. In the grand scheme of things, Gemini can interpret text data from performance reviews and employee feedback to help you identify trends, eliminate bottlenecks, and make improvements across the entire organization.

Marketing

With Gemini, data from various Workspace sources translates into an understanding of customer demographics, needs, challenges, and behaviors. Armed with this knowledge, you can outline more accurate and detailed buyer personas. 

That, in turn, sets you up for success when identifying the key value propositions that resonate most with your target audience and informs the development of compelling Value Proposition Canvases.

Once the core value props are identified, Gemini can assist with crafting clear and concise messaging for your VPC based on Jobs to Be Done.

Sales

One of Gemini’s most breathtaking features is the real-time translation of sales interactions over Google Meet — just imagine the implications for your market expansion strategy.

Apart from that, Gemini can be a valuable asset in designing playbooks that guide sales reps through each stage of the customer journey, suggesting relevant resources like product brochures, case studies, or in-depth industry reports. Once a lead has been captured, Gemini can analyze various data sources within Google Workspace to help assess their potential value and readiness for sales outreach.

Last but not least, with Gemini, salespeople can automate the creation of data visualizations, charts, and general imagery in Google Slides to make pitch decks more appealing.

What Are Our Options?

First of all, Gemini for Workspace offers a free trial period of 30 days.

Once the time is up, you can sign up for either Gemini Business (US$20 per user when billed annually / US$24 per user when billed monthly) or Gemini Enterprise (US$30 per user when billed annually / US$36 per user when billed monthly).

Please note that at the time of writing, Gemini is accessible to English-speaking users in regions where Google Workspace is sold. In case you opted for a Duet AI add-on before, you are eligible for an automatic upgrade to the Enterprise package, meaning no extra action is required to enable Gemini for Google Workspace on your part.

We Don’t Have the Expertise for That

Not a problem! Being a Google Cloud Premier Partner, Cloudfresh is here to guide you through change. As your Google Workspace consultant and AI partner, we provide the following:

• Customized implementation addressing your industry challenges and business scenarios.
• Scalable PoC and PoV to measure performance, quantify the benefits, and secure stakeholder buy-in.
• Adoption of select solutions and their integration with your underlying IT infrastructure to ensure minimal disruption.
• Ongoing support to respond to technical issues, market fluctuations, and emerging opportunities.

It all starts with a free consultation session, during which we assess your current state and locate areas best suited for GenAI roll-out. Book yours below.