The Hidden Costs of NOT Automating Your Business

Most business leaders agree that automation matters… but the cost of not automating often goes unnoticed. After all, it’s not like you can point to specific line items on a budget that illustrate these hidden costs. Instead, they show up in things like lost time and slower decision-making. 

Here’s where these costs often appear – and how automation tools from Google can help you avoid them.

1. Wasted Time on Repetitive Work

Everyday repetitive tasks take up hours each week – writing internal emails, responding to customers, summarizing meetings, doing simple coding, and more. With Google’s integrated AI tools, many of these types of tasks can be handled much more quickly. The following are just a few practical examples:

Scale AI Productivity Across Teams with Gemini Enterprise

While point solutions save time on individual tasks, the real gains come when AI is deployed consistently across the organization. Gemini Enterprise brings advanced AI capabilities directly into Google Workspace at scale, giving teams a secure, enterprise-ready way to automate knowledge work across roles and departments.

With Gemini Enterprise, employees can summarize documents, generate content, analyze information, and get contextual assistance directly within the tools they already use every day. Centralized controls, data protections, and admin visibility ensure AI adoption stays aligned with company policies without slowing teams down with repetitive busywork.

Kick-start Every Email with AI – Smarter and Faster!

Gemini in Gmail can save you the effort of writing emails from scratch. In Google Workspace, it’s available right inside your Gmail compose window to seamlessly assist in drafting messages. It’s easy to refine generated drafts with follow-up prompts, as well. Just tell it what you want to adjust! 

Embrace Your Built-In Meeting Assistant

Stay focused during Google Meet sessions and let Gemini handle the details. It’s your built-in AI assistant that takes notes, generates a detailed summary of key points and decisions, and appropriately assigns action items to individual team members. To ensure nothing slips through the cracks, action items can even be integrated with Google Tasks afterward.

Skip the Busywork with Your AI Coding Partner

Streamline your coding instantly using Gemini Code Assist – or Jules if you’re subscribed to Google AI Ultra. Get automatic code suggestions as you write, and generate full functions or transform code to different frameworks and languages within seconds. 

Low-code and no-code options with Google AppSheet mean you don’t even have to be a seasoned developer to build practical tools and workflows on your own! (Well, with a little help from AI, that is.) Best of all, AppSheet is fully integrated with Google Workspace and connects to third-party apps like Dropbox and Salesforce, as well.

…Of course, wasted time isn’t the only concern. When information moves slowly, decisions do, too.

2. Slower Decisions and Missed Insights

Decision-making lags behind when you have to wait for manual analysis. Gaining timely insights, on the other hand, keeps you moving forward rather than reacting after things have already shifted or momentum is lost. Strike while the iron is hot with these AI-assisted offerings from Google:

Smarter Analysis in Google Sheets with Gemini

Reviewing large or complex datasets in Google Sheets can be slow work. Gemini instantly extracts the signal from the noise and presents key takeaways at a glance. It lets you query your data directly within Sheets using natural language, such as “Which channels have brought in the most qualified leads this month?” – and delivers clear summaries, insights, and even visualizations on demand. 

In turn, you can jump straight to strategizing and decision-making rather than getting stuck in the weeds.

Faster Research and Synthesis with NotebookLM

If you’re struggling with information overload, NotebookLM can help. It’s a unique language model leveraging Gemini that focuses exclusively on the information sources you add – so it essentially becomes your personalized AI research assistant grounded in your own notes and sources. 

Upload Google Docs, Slides, PDFs, text files, audio files, website URLs, YouTube transcripts, and more. Then sit back and let NotebookLM synthesize the data for you.

Enterprise-Grade Analytics at Scale with BigQuery

Never lose visibility of your data again! BigQuery is Google Cloud’s fully managed and serverless enterprise data warehouse (EDW). It supports all data types and includes built-in machine learning and business intelligence features – all in one unified platform. 

With streaming data pipelines feeding live information into BigQuery, you can run real-time analytics and share data across clouds. Plus, there’s another bonus: you pay only for the compute capacity you actually use.

Finally, another hidden cost shows up when onboarding takes longer than it should.

3. Inefficient Onboarding and Employee Training

Slow onboarding holds everyone back. A smooth onboarding experience helps new hires hit the ground running – which is great for both productivity and morale. It’s a process that works best when knowledge is organized, accessible, and easy to learn. We’ve already touched on some automation tools from Google that make this possible, such as:

• Gemini in Google Workspace to help draft onboarding guides and convert notes into polished and reusable training materials using Docs, Slides, Vids, and more.

• NotebookLM, which can turn handbooks, SOPs, and internal docs into a searchable assistant that answers role-specific questions.

• AppSheet to support a personalized onboarding experience, with templated apps that manage a training plan for employees and can even integrate with Google Classroom events.

As you might imagine, these examples only scratch the surface of what’s possible. There’s a whole world of efficiencies waiting to be realized through automation – and the sooner you get started, the faster those gains will compound.

Say Goodbye to Hidden Costs Today

If you’re ready to identify where automation can make the biggest impact in your organization – and start putting these tools to work for you – Wursta can help! Our expert change management team guides businesses through the entire journey of building smarter, AI-supported processes and workflows. 

From planning and implementation to optimization and beyond, we’re here to ensure your automation efforts are aligned to real outcomes. As always, our approach is rooted in best practices and structured for long-term success, so you see lasting value. 

Let’s take the hidden costs off the table. Reach out to start the conversation today!