Beginners are always asking for examples of AI Automation Agency Services that they can provide clients, so we decided to do precisely that. This article will walk you through a detailed example of an AAA service a beginner can provide to companies: Automated News Monitoring. This practical solution addresses a common pain point. I use an almost identical process to monitor news, so it is effective.
Please note that this is a straightforward solution to a basic pain point many businesses have. Offering this service will not earn an AAA much if any, cash. However, it was a valuable solution for a client that can be applied to other prospects and clients, so we think it is worth showing as a "beginner" solution.
Points to Note
This example is a very basic AAA service that is easy to implement.
No coding or complex knowledge is required for this solution.
We aim to demonstrate how AI Automation Agencies approach and solve problems.
If you can solve basic issues, companies will trust you to solve more complex problems.
Companies may not even be aware that such a simple solution is available.
Step 1 - Business Problem/Pain Point
Below is a short background to this case study:
Aiifi's client was a financial services company that had 20+ vendors/suppliers
The vendor management team managed the relationships with the firm's suppliers
The vendor management team had an ongoing task to monitor online news
Checking for vendor risk-related news stories, such as compliance breaches, lawsuits, data security issues etc.
This task was repetitive and boring for the person carrying it out
They could spend their time doing more valuable work for the firm
Because it is a manual check, there is also a risk the person may miss an important news story
Step 2 - Aiifi's Analysis
Aiifi was asked to review the news monitoring process and see if we could use AI to automate it.
Our first task was to analyze the steps involved in the existing manual approach. By doing that, we could fully understand the process. Once we fully understood the process, we could identify where it may be possible to utilize an AI tool or workflow software to automate the process.
Below are the steps a person on the vendor management team went through for this online news monitoring task:
Old Manual News Monitoring Process:
Open Google.
Type in a vendor company name.
Filter search results for recent news.
Open news articles individually and read through them to assess their relevance.
If an article is relevant, save the link for consolidation at the end.
Repeat the process for each of the ten vendors.
Consolidate the links and analyze the information gathered from the different news articles.
Create an email, attach the relevant links and send the mail to the team.
Repeat this entire process weekly.
This was an easy problem for Aiifi to resolve. An off-the-shelf AI tool is available that can effectively replace the entire old manual approach on its own. The financial services company was not aware of this tool. As the team lacked time to investigate solutions, they welcomed Aiifi's implementation.
Step 3 - Aiifi's Solution
Feedly - AI-powered news aggregator
Feedly is an AI-powered news aggregator application that automatically compiles news feeds from various online sources. Sources include news websites, trade publications, blogs, research journals, podcasts, newsletters, and YouTube videos. Users choose sources and organize them into feeds. Feeds are a way to organize the articles by topic, project, or industry.
Feedly incorporates AI & machine learning into its platform through a feature called "Feedly AI". Users train Feedly AI by giving it insights about the subjects, trends, and sources that are relevant to them. The training helps Feedly AI understand patterns, refining its content curation over time to only show articles tailored to a user's preference in their feeds.
Feedly allows articles to be saved from different feeds to a "Board" with one click. You can have a personal "Board" or add content to a "Team Board" to start creating libraries of must-read content for your team to view.
Importantly for Aiifi and this problem, you can create team newsletters directly in Feedly. Feedly will automatically convert newly saved articles in a specified "Board" into a formatted newsletter. It will automatically send the newsletter on a set schedule to an email list saved by the user.
Although we didn't utilize it in this case, Feedly's integration with Zapier enables connection with 700+ apps like Slack, WordPress, and Notion.
Aiifi Implementation
Aiifi did the below work for the vendor management team to implement the new process:
Set up a Feedly account for the team members who required access for news monitoring.
Created separate feeds for each vendor, using the vendor's name as the primary keyword.
For each feed, Aiifi prioritized or deprioritized specific themes, topics, and sources relevant to that vendor.
Aiifi reviewed the initial news articles Feedly curated on each feed.
Aiifi provided feedback on each feed to Feedly AI by hitting the "Less Like This" button for articles that were not relevant. This signals to Feedly AI that it needs to adjust its model to omit similar articles from appearing in the future. This is called "training the model".
Aiifi created a "Board" for each of the vendors.
Aiifi created a "Team Newsletter" to be sent automatically at 07.00 Monday to Friday. It will include all articles newly saved to the "Boards" since the last email was sent.
After the implementation, Aiifi trained the vendor management team to use Feedly. As Feedly is very user-friendly, training was done in a matter of hours.
Below is the new monitoring process after Aiifi's implementation. Compare this with the "Old Manual News Monitoring Process" detailed earlier in the article to see the improvement.
New News Monitoring Process Using Feedly
Login to Feedly.
Navigate to the vendor feeds.
Review news articles: go through the articles curated by Feedly AI.
Save relevant articles: Hit the "Save to Board" button to send important articles to that vendor's "Board".
N:B: Remember the articles saved to the boards will be automatically emailed at 07.00 Monday to Friday. The employee no longer needs to save links and manually send an email.
Results for Aiifi's Client
The Aiifi-led transition to Feedly AI reduced the manual labor involved in monitoring vendor-related news by 95%. The new process was more accurate too. It ensured no relevant news stories were missed, as Feedly pulls from additional sources the employees had not looked at in their old, manual process.
Employees were delighted as they no longer had to carry out the repetitive task of searching and filtering for news on Google, saving news story links and sending them in an email. The owner was happy as his employees were freed to spend more time on valuable work.
Benefit to Aiifi
While this is a straightforward solution, it solves a real pain point for a client. This process can now be used for any of our prospects or clients in the future, regardless of their industry. While we will not make much money from this (we will do it for free), the goodwill it generates and the additional business we will win more than offsets the cost of the time we spend doing it for "free".
If you liked this article, you will be glad to hear that we plan to publish more similar articles. In the meantime, we recommend you read the following AI Automation Agency articles from our blog to grow your knowledge of this exciting area.