Less time in the inbox, more time on the golf course
Two hours a day are spent in the inbox. Membership enquiries and bookings in both English and Swedish. Matt Holman, PGA Advanced Professional and founder of Matt Holman Indoor Golf in Umeå, was spending hours responding to emails instead of doing what he truly has a passion for: coaching and helping people with their golf game.
Matt came into contact with RISE and the project AI at Work, which helps companies understand and apply AI in their operations. As part of the support initiative, Matt was asked to describe the needs and challenges he faced in his day-to-day work. Together with RISE, ideas were sketched out, prototypes were developed, and various solutions were tested and refined. A large part of the work was carried out by Matt himself, with support from RISE along the way. In this way, Matt can now spend less time on administration that creates neither value nor job satisfaction.
"The support initiative has helped build a foundation of knowledge, working methods and processes for developing and testing new ideas with AI. This means Matt can continue to tackle new challenges even after the project has ended. In this way, the initiative has created long-term benefits for the company's ability to develop a sustainable business model," says Oskar Riby, project manager for AI at Work at RISE.
The AI tool that Matt has implemented in his business means he gets more time for what matters, coaching. The tool helps him with administrative tasks, including bookings, memberships, categorisation and other matters – the kinds of things that take time away from the core business. The tool produces ready-made drafts in English or Swedish that are reviewed before being sent to his customers, so Matt stays in control.
Something Matt had not anticipated was that the quality of his work would also improve. Today, the administrative work is not only faster, but more tasks get done and, on top of that, communication is more consistent.
"It's like having a highly capable assistant, which means my time goes towards reviewing the content rather than creating it from scratch," says Matt.
Today, Matt saves one to two hours of administrative work per day. That gives him more time for what truly matters – coaching, developing programmes, and spending more time with clients who need more personal contact. Matt sees no reason to go back to the manual way of working.
Matt's advice to other business owners is simple – start with whatever takes the most time and is the biggest problem in the business.
"As you build trust in the technology, you will naturally want to apply it to more areas."
Want to know more about the AI at Work project and how it can help your business? Read more here or contact Oskar Riby, oskar.riby@ri.se.
