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☕️ All These Talks About AI But How Do We Use It?
⏱️ Read time: 1 minute
Frederique Decelles
April 03, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes
Hey 👋,
As you know, last week we attended the Quebexpo show in Drummondville. We had the chance to witness AI’s rising popularity in our industry. Some use it for administrative purposes only, some use it in rental operations, and some want to use it but don’t know how.
After all this talk about AI, the consensus we observed is that most people are keen to try. The next step is understanding how to use it to its full potential for your needs. So we’ll show you how we use it on a daily basis.
What is Prompting?
Prompting is the way you communicate with an AI to get the results you want. To learn more about this, check out this resource on effective prompting.
AI systems […] are primarily built on the combination of two technologies: natural language processing and machine learning (Mollick, 2023). This combination enables AI to understand your prompts even if you write them as if you’re having a conversation with another human being. It also means the system continuously learns from input from you and other users.
Prompting Methods & Tips:
Be Specific: Instead of saying "analyze my rental data," try "analyze my rental data from the past year, focusing on excavator rentals in Quebec, and identify trends in rental frequency and revenue." Whenever you want to ask something of AI try to think of how you would instruct an employee to do it for you. We treat AI the same way.
Provide Context: Give the AI background information to help it understand your request. For example, "I'm the owner of an independent rental center in Montreal. I want to use AI to improve my inventory management." Giving a clear context and target audience is important. Do you need it to answer as simply as if it were talking to a 5-year-old, or would you need a complex and detailed answer? If you have an example of past documents that reflect the work you are asking it to do, that also helps keep it aligned with your tone and brand.
Use Constraints: Specify the format, length, or style of the output you want. For example, "Generate a report summarizing the data, and keep it to under 200 words."
By using effective prompts, you can leverage AI to automate tasks, gain valuable insights, and transform your rental operations.
Have you ever used AI chats? What could you use them for this week? Think of something you need help with.
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