Automate Your Workflow to Save Time, Energy, and Money

Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department, where a small business owner repeats the same administrative tasks daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. From turning the lights on to start your day to turning them off at day’s end – and everything in between – it’s trying to be the boss. This is especially true if you’re a hands-on and/or a micro-manager type of boss.

This begs the question of whether you should automate your workflow to reduce all that redundancy.

Automated Task Management

Thanks to the folks at BusinessOfHome.com, we’ve discovered an exciting way to slough off those mundane, time- and energy-sucking administrative business tasks that can make you wonder why you ever started your own business. This magical task management tool is called Airtable and it's shaking things up in the industry.

“There are a million moving parts to any design project. From presentations to procurement to payment, there is plenty of room for tasks to slip through the cracks. We asked designers to share their favorite tools for keeping all their ducks in a row.”

“Airtable is a programmable database that manages both projects and customer relationships. The platform allows designers to track client information – potential clients, active clients, and even the profitability of each client – as well as purchases for individual projects.”

Can you imagine?

“For Philadelphia-based designer Lucy O’Brien, Airtable is the ‘brain behind her firm, with an administrative hub for internal documents as well as client-facing workspaces for each project, with separate tabs for each room, construction documents, and paint schedules. ‘This platform has the clarity of Excel spreadsheets but enables you to upload pictures, documents, links and so much more into the cells,’ says O’Brien.

“’ That feature was one of the main reasons I finally stuck with Airtable – so many of the other systems I tried did not give the overall organization and document storage I wanted in a visual way that felt clean and organized.’”

Simplify Your Workday

According to the Airtable website: “From sending notifications to orchestrating cross-functional work, Airtable automations are a powerful rules engine that can help you and your team stay connected.”

From the simplest to the most complex, the platform offers simplified steps to help you manage workflow seamlessly and efficiently:

• Quickly and easily create Airtable automations using a simple, drag-and-drop builder.

• See how automations can help save you time by eliminating redundant tasks and streamlining your work.

• Connect automations to your most important tools to create a seamless, cohesive workflow.

And, amazingly, “A free plan is available to start but increases to $45 per month for the most sophisticated plan, which offers perks like storage of 100 gigabytes of attachments.”

Ted remains available for business consulting to the trade and as a potential guide for the use of AI business support platforms for designers and furniture dealers. If you’d like to chat with him about your design business needs, simply… Contact TD Fall today.

AI in Interior Design – From the Common to the Uncommon

Artificial intelligence in interior design has become a fact of life. In other words, AI applications are a common tool for designing and creating virtual and augmented reality experiences for clients, allowing them to visualize their space before any physical work is done.

Less common is the use of AI among designers to tackle the day-to-day minutiae of running their business. Despite the broad use of such applications among the business community at large, it is uncommon for designers and dealers to employ AI-based solutions for more mundane tasks that devour so much time and effort from a business owner.

From payroll to client follow-up and even from client acquisition to forecasting to help plan for the future, artificial intelligence administration applications enable a designer to spend more time working with clients, and even more time to… design beautiful spaces.

How AI can Help Small Business Owners

A September article at FurnitureToday.com states, “The furniture industry has gotten on board with A.I. and its content-creating subset, generative A.I.”

Further, they declare, “Whether retailers are deploying virtual reality technology to show how home furnishings will look within a room, adding chatbots to their online customer service applications, using A.I. for business forecasting and data analysis, or using it to write copy for press releases or product descriptions on their websites, interest has been growing.”

And, clever people that they are, they inquired of the free-to-use AI-generated chatbot ChatGPT itself to explain to them what the future of AI will look like for the furniture and design industries:

• Advanced AR/VR experiences: Future applications could include more immersive AR/VR experiences, allowing customers to virtually rearrange furniture in their spaces or explore entire room designs.

• AI-powered design assistance: Retailers could offer A.I. tools that help customers design their spaces by suggesting furniture layouts, color schemes, and complementary items.

• Sentiment analysis: A.I. could analyze customer reviews and feedback to gauge sentiment and identify areas for product improvement or customer service enhancement.

• Smart showrooms: Physical stores could incorporate A.I. to create smart showrooms, where A.I.-powered devices interact with customers, provide information, and even simulate different lighting conditions.

• Sustainability and material sourcing: AI could be used to trace the origin of materials, assess their sustainability, and provide customers with detailed information about the environmental impact of products.

• Emotional A.I.: A.I. could be used to understand customers’ emotional responses to different designs, helping retailers create emotionally resonant marketing and product strategies.

• Predictive maintenance for furniture: A.I. could be used to predict when furniture items might need maintenance or replacement based on usage patterns and material degradation.

• Collaborative design platforms: AI-driven platforms could facilitate collaboration between customers, designers, and retailers, enabling real-time design modifications and adjustments.

• Automated personal shopping assistants: A.I.-powered virtual assistants could help customers navigate through the purchasing process, offering personalized recommendations and facilitating the buying journey.

• Interactive in-store experiences: Physical stores could use A.I. to create interactive displays and experiences that engage and educate customers about furniture features, materials, and design options.

Does anyone else think that list is a little intimidating?

Using AI is Inevitable

Granted, We may have seen a few too many sci-fi movies but, asking an AI-generated app what the future looks like for AI-generated apps sounds a bit creepy to us. Seems like they’re just asking the darned bot to take control of things from them. (Have these folks never seen 2001 A Space Odyssey?)

Seriously, the burdens that can be lifted from a business owner’s shoulders are almost too numerous to count. And, it’s only going to grow: “Few segments [of the economy and business] are growing at the rate of the artificial intelligence market. What was estimated to be a $140 billion industry in 2022 is expected to grow to nearly $2 trillion by 2030, according to Next Move Strategy Consulting.”

(After reading this, you may want to watch something like “White Christmas” before bed tonight so you can avoid dreams of various artificial intelligences attacking you.)

Ted remains available for business consulting to the trade and as a potential guide for the use of AI in design as well as for furniture dealers. (Unfortunately, he has yet to learn dream therapy.) But, if you’d like to chat with him about your design business nightmares, simply… Contact TD Fall today.