An Introduction to Zapier: AI for Business
How Zapier Can Supercharge Solopreneurs, Professionals & Businesses with AI
AI Tool: Zapier
Level: Intermediate
Access: Paid
This guide is part 1 of the course Learn Zapier: AI for Business.Â
What's the best way to use AI in business?Â
You might have already used AI tools like ChatGPT or Claude and found it useful.Â
But what’s the best way to use AI in business, at scale & cost effectively?
In this guide, we will cover:
The Difference between Automation and AI
The Challenges of Using AI in Business
Zapier's 5 Tools: Comprehensive Automation
Limitations & Cons of Zapier
What Puts Zapier Above the Rest
Zapier: A Powerful Solution for AI in Business
The Difference Between Automation and AI
These are some of the leading automation platforms today:
Zapier is one of the most well-known automation platforms, offering integrations with over 7,000 apps, and the broadest range of AI tools.
Microsoft Power Automate provides advanced automation features, including RPA (Robotic Process Automation) for desktop applications and business process flows.
Make.com offers an automation platform with a visual workflow designer and extensive app integrations.Â
Automate.io helps automate workflows by connecting over 200 cloud applications.
IFTTT continues to be a popular choice for simple automation tasks, offering a wide range of applets for different tasks.
Workato provides a low-code automation platform for connecting applications and automating workflows.Â
Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are often used interchangeably, but they are not quite the same thing - they serve distinct purposes and operate on fundamentally different principles.Â
Understanding these differences is crucial for businesses and professionals interested in using these technologies.
Automation:
Primary Functionality: Automation focuses on executing simple repetitive tasks with precision and consistency, often replacing manual labour with predictable processes. It uses predefined simple rules and sequences, doing best at standardised tasks but struggling with unforeseen variations.
Key Features: Rule-based, pre-defined instructions, simple repetitive tasks & logic, no learning or adaptation, and limited to well-defined processes.
Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Primary Functionality: AI mimics human cognitive functions, learning from data and adapting to new information to tackle complex problems. It uses artificial neural networks to process information, similar to our brains, to learn from experience, and make informed decisions.
Key Features: Learning-based, adapts and improves from experience, complex tasks requiring cognitive abilities, decision-making based on data and learning, and highly adaptable to new situations.
So, while both automation and AI aim to streamline tasks traditionally performed by humans, they operate on very different principles.Â
Understanding these key differences is important for being able to use these technologies effectively in business and beyond, by understanding the range of tasks each is capable of.
The Challenges of Using AI in Work & Business
AI is increasingly vital for maintaining the competitiveness of businesses, and for professionals who want to remain relevant in the job market.Â
But this is easier said than done. Successfully using AI in practice presents many challenges.Â
Two primary approaches to using AI are custom AI development and the use of general General AI tools, each with distinct advantages and drawbacks.
Custom AI Development
Custom AI development involves crafting bespoke AI solutions tailored to specific business needs. This approach, while potentially highly valuable, faces several significant challenges:
High Costs: This requires a team of specialist roles such as data scientists, AI and data engineers, web developers, and technical infrastructure making it a costly investment of time and money.
Long Development Times: Projects can extend over months or even years, which can be risky without guaranteed results.
High Failure Rates: Most large-scale AI projects fail due to inadequate project scoping, prototyping, and a poor understanding of AI. A recent Forbes report highlighted how 60-80% of AI projects fail.
I've been a Data Scientist, AI Engineer, Web Developer and AI Consultant for both large businesses and small startups and agencies, and so have seen what's involved in doing custom development.
Custom AI development by a dedicated team is expensive, slow, and high-risk, and relies on business assumptions about AI and its abilities that may not be accurate.
General AI Tools
General AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude provide a more accessible entry point into AI, offering a low-cost and quick-start option for both businesses and professionals.
However, they come with their own set of challenges:
Limited Customisation: These tools are not easily tailored for specific tasks and may require a high degree of manual work to use effectively
Lack of Scale: They often require manual processes such as copying and pasting, which can be inefficient at scale
I've used these generic AI tools myself for both my personal and work life, and to help clients solve various use cases.Â
These tools can be very useful for helping people understand the basics of AI, and start using it to help solve real problems at no cost.Â
This is why I've also created two free beginner-level AI courses:
These are great and useful tools.Â
Yet, because they are generic tools, they are not well customised for specific tasks, which means a lot of manual work when using them for example copying and pasting, uploading documents, crafting prompts every time etc.
These tools don't scale well when you want to start using them for business use cases that require high usage & demand.
Why Neither Approach Is Ideal for Business
Neither custom AI development nor General AI tools provide an ideal solution for most businesses.
Custom development is resource-intensive and risky, requiring substantial investment in time, money and expertise with no guarantee of success. Recent analyses indicate failure rates of custom AI projects are high.
On the other hand, General AI tools like ChatGPT lack the customisation needed for specific business applications and often involve manual processes that hinder scalability and efficiency.Â
In a rapidly evolving business environment where AI adaptability, low cost, quick iteration, and scalable deployment are crucial, businesses need solutions that better balance and combine the strengths of both approaches while mitigating their limitations.Â
Having done extensive research on solutions available, I've found Zapier to be one of the best solutions right now for using AI to solve real business use cases in a way that provides a better balance between custom AI development vs using generic AI tools like ChatGPT.
From what I can see, Zapier provides most of the upsides of both custom AI development and general AI tools, but with few of the downsides of each.
We'll now look into Zapiers main offerings of tools.
Zapier's 5 Tools: Comprehensive Automation
Zapier offers a suite of five powerful tools designed to streamline workflows, enhance productivity, and integrate various business applications seamlessly.Â
Zaps
Zaps are the core automation tool of Zapier, allowing users to create automated workflows by connecting different applications. With over 7,000 app integrations, Zaps enable users to automate tasks without coding knowledge.
Tables
Zapier Tables is a no-code database tool that allows users to store, edit, share, and automate data in one place. It serves as a central hub to collect and merge data from different sources, making it immediately actionable.
Interfaces
Interfaces enable users to build professional apps, forms, and web pages that easily connect to Zaps and Tables. This tool allows for seamless integration with Zapier’s library of 6,000+ apps, offering comprehensive automation capabilities.
Chatbots
Zapier Chatbots allows users to create AI-powered chatbots in minutes to better serve customers and leads. These chatbots can draw from knowledge sources to answer questions, resolve issues, and capture lead information.
Zapier Central
Zapier Central is a new experimental AI workspace where users can teach AI agents to work independently across 7,000+ apps. It allows for the creation and training of internal agents for specific tasks, offering a unified workspace for AI and automation.
Limitations & Cons of Zapier
While Zapier is a powerful tool for automating workflows and integrating various apps using AI, it also has some limitations that you should be aware of.
Here are some of the key limitations:
Complex Workflow Setup: Zapier can be challenging for very complex workflows with multiple branches & triggers.
Limited Control Over Data Transfer: Users have limited control over how data is transferred between apps.
Outdated Interface Design and Learning Curve: Parts of Zapier’s interface feel outdated, and there is a learning curve for new users.
Technical Limitations: No mobile app, API limitations, occasional delays, and throttling can occur.
Integration and Compatibility Issues: Limited functionality with some apps, discontinued app support, and no QuickBooks Desktop integration.
New AI Features Experimental: While Zapier is a leader in making cutting edge AI available, this is also a con. These AI features are are basically in beta & ongoing development. This means there may be some reliability issues as these are worked on when using the most cutting edge features.
What Puts Zapier Above The Rest
Despite these limitations, together, these five Zapier tools provide a comprehensive platform for automating workflows, integrating applications, and using the widest range of AI capabilities to improve productivity.
One of the key defining features of the Zapier suite of tools compared to any competitors, is it offers the broadest range of AI solutions from simple automations to some of the most cutting-edge use cases of AI e.g. AI agents.Â
Zapier integrates ChatGPT and other AI models directly within its platform and connects it with most major business applications you will use, with easy access to your data.Â
This makes Zapier quick & easy to use and powerful, a killer combination.
Another key benefit is using Zapier doesn't require an expensive team of AI engineers & Web Developers making custom AI solutions in code, code you neither understand nor can control yourself.Â
Zapier's no-code tools used by you, create your AI solutions, under your control.
While there are other no-code automation providers as we saw earlier, none of them have the wide range of AI capabilities that Zapier provides.
Zapier let’s you experiment and test AI business ideas quickly and cheaply, and if valuable, scale them easily.
Zapier does this with an extremely user-friendly interface that's simple to use, scales with demand, is easy to customise for specific tasks, and integrates with more external third-party services than any other platform.
Zapier: A Powerful Solution for AI in Business
Zapier offers a unique solution that combines many of the benefits of both custom AI development and using general AI tools like ChatGPT - while minimising downsides, and is a clear leader compared to competitors.
Zapier's AI-powered features provide a comprehensive platform for automating workflows, integrating various applications, and using AI capabilities without the need for extensive coding knowledge or significant investment in custom coding & development.Â
By using Zapier's AI capabilities, businesses can achieve the following benefits:
Reduced Costs: Cost is related to usage, which means you'll only pay for what you use. Lower investment & risk to experiment with AI compared to custom AI development.
Faster Deployment: Quick setup and deployment of AI-powered workflows.
Increased Efficiency: Automated tasks and processes reduce manual errors compared to manual use of tools like ChatGPT and enhance productivity.
Scale: AI solutions you build within Zapier can scale easily with demand.
Customisation: AI solutions can be customised for specific use-cases.
Flexibility: AI tools like ChatGPT can be integrated into workflows to perform tasks such as managing customer responses & emails, and writing product descriptions.
Zapier offers one of the best ways for businesses and professionals to start using AI, combining the best strengths of both custom AI development and general AI tools like ChatGPT while minimising their limitations and risks.
In this course, I’ll take you from how you can build simple automations in Zapier to how you can build advanced AI applications such as customer service chatbots.
Next in this course: Build a Zap - Automations for Business with Zapier