Artificial Intelligence for NZ SME’s
Functions of AI worth knowing
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Your thinking partner. Ask questions, draft content, brainstorm, research. No setup, just open and go. This is where most people start.
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Persistent context. Set up once with your business background and AI remembers it every conversation. No re-explaining yourself each time.
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Ask AI to research a topic, summarise an article, or compare options. Research is your AI analyst and Web saves hours of manual searching.
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Upload a document, spreadsheet, or report and ask questions about it. AI reads it so you don't have to start from scratch, giving you always on context. Co-Work can work in your files on your behalf.
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These are workflow shortcuts. Repeatable, multi-stage prompts all loaded as a quick access shortcut.
Kiwi SME AI usage is mainstream, but shallow. SMEs are mostly using AI as a time-saving assistant. When used properly it can power your business growth, automate your workflows, augment your customer support and more. Each function of AI is designed for a different type of work. Knowing which to reach for is the first skill to build.
Act, Context & Tone
By going deeper with A.C.T. you will level up your AI game.
Action
What do you want AI to do? Be specific. Write, summarise, draft, analyse, rewrite, research. One clear verb changes everything.
Context
Give AI the background it needs. Your role, the audience, the purpose, any constraints. The more relevant context you provide, the better the output.
Tone
How should it sound? Formal or conversational? Brief or detailed? Direct or warm? If you have a writing style, describe it or paste an example.
Set up your AI Workspace - Skills
A skill is a pre-configured instruction set that tells your AI what to do and when. Once it's set up, it just works contextually in the flow of work. Most of these skills connect to your existing tools; email, calendar, notion, slack so there's no copy-pasting involved.
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Once this skill is set up, any time you ask AI to draft an email or message, it automatically writes in your voice; your tone, your length, your habits. You never have to explain how you write.
Connects to: Your email account (sent folder)
What it does: Reads your sent emails, identifies your writing patterns, and builds a permanent style guide. Every future draft matches your voice automatically.
How to set it up: Connect your email. Ask Claude to read your last 50 sent emails and write a style guide covering your tone, sentence length, how you open and close, and what you never say. Save this as Skill or in your Instructions.
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Every morning you get a short brief covering what's on today, anything you need to follow up from yesterday's email, and anything worth flagging. You open it first instead of opening your inbox.
Connects to: Calendar + email
What it does: Runs automatically each morning. Pulls today's meetings, summarises key emails requiring action, and flags anything time-sensitive.
How to set it up: Set up a scheduled task that runs at a time that suits you each morning. Tell it to check your calendar for today and scan your email for anything requiring action or follow-up.
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Before your weekly team meeting, you get a structured summary of last week and this week. Takes the prep work out of running the meeting.
Connects to: Calendar + email
What it does: Runs every Monday morning. Summarises last week's key meetings and any commitments made in sent email, then lists this week's meetings and open actions.
How to set it up: Set up a scheduled task to run Monday mornings. Tell it to look back over the past week's calendar and sent emails, then look ahead at the week's calendar, and format the output as a structured WIP brief.
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You describe what you want to say and who you're saying it to. AI writes the draft in your voice, using the writing style skill already loaded. No prompt needed just tell it what you want.
Connects to: Your writing style skill (see above)
What it does: When you ask AI to draft an email, it automatically applies your writing style. You just say who it's to, what it's about, and what you want to happen.
How to set it up: This works automatically once your writing style is set up. Just say: "Draft an email to [name] about [topic]. I want [outcome]."
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Before a meeting, AI gives you a one-page brief: who you're meeting, what you discussed last time, any relevant emails, and the key questions to have answered by the end.
Connects to: Calendar + email
What it does: Before each meeting, surfaces relevant context, recent emails with the person, previous meeting notes, and key questions to resolve.
How to set it up: Tell AI to look at your calendar, find the next meeting with [person/company], search your emails for relevant context, and give you a short brief. Save this as a skill so you can trigger it before any meeting.
AI prompts for business leaders
These are for tasks that are inherently specific to the moment, where you need to give AI the context because it can't get it automatically. Copy the prompt, replace the bracketed text, and paste it into your AI tool.
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Use this before committing to something significant; a pricing change, a hire, a new product, a strategic shift.
I'm about to make a decision and I want you to stress test it before I commit.The decision: [what you're planning to do]
My reasoning: [why you think it's the right call]
Play devil's advocate. What am I not seeing? What assumptions am I making that could be wrong? What's the worst realistic outcome? What would need to be true for this to work?
Be direct. I don't need encouragement, I need the holes pointed out.
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When you need to understand something quickly before making a call; a supplier, a market, a regulation, a competitor.
I need to understand [topic] quickly. I'm a business owner with no background in this area.Give me:
1. The key things I need to know — plain language, no jargon
2. The main risks or things I should watch out for
3. The 2-3 questions I should be asking before I make a decision
Keep it under one page. I'll ask follow-up questions if I need more.
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When you have a lot on your mind and need to make sense of it before you can act.
I'm going to brain dump everything on my mind about [topic / project / challenge]. Read it, find the most important threads, and help me work out what to focus on first.Ask me clarifying questions after I share the dump, don’t act until I’ve said that I’m finished. Don't try to solve everything, help me prioritise.
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When you have multiple options and need a structured way to compare them; suppliers, candidates, pricing models, strategies.
I need to choose between [X options]. Help me evaluate them.
The options:
[list them]
What matters most to me:
[list 3-5 criteria — e.g. cost, risk, fit with the team, time to implement]
Score each option against each criterion and give me a clear recommendation. If you'd push back on my criteria or the options themselves, say so.
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When tone really matters, saying no, delivering bad news, following up on something overdue.
Help me write a message that's difficult to get right.
Situation: [what happened and what you need to communicate]
Recipient: [who this is going to and your relationship]
What I need to say: [the key point — don't soften it]
What I want them to feel: [informed / respected / clear on next steps]
Write it in a direct, human tone. Lead with the point. Don't be cold, but don't bury the message.
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For investor reports, board updates, or getting your thinking straight before a key conversation.
I need to write a performance summary for [business / period].
Key data:
[revenue, key metrics, what happened — bullet points are fine]
Write this as a short narrative (2-3 paragraphs). Not a list. It should read like someone who understands the business explaining what happened and why. Be honest about what didn't work.
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Before a performance review, a difficult client call, or a sensitive team discussion.
Help me prepare for a difficult conversation.
Who with: [role / relationship]
What it's about: [the issue — be specific]
What I want to achieve: [the outcome]
What I'm worried about: [how they might react, what might go wrong]
Give me: the key points I need to make, how to open the conversation, and how to handle the most likely pushback.
Want more? Here are a few of our favourite prompt libraries to get you started:
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