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AI for Business Professionals: Work smart, not hard

Trainer(s): Ramon Wieleman, Tom Wigleven, duration: 8 hours

Introduction

Want to use AI but don’t know where to start? Know that you could automate parts of your business processes, but worried about sending all your business-critical information to the cloud? Overwhelmed by the sheer number of AI tools and unsure which ones actually deliver? Then this training is for you.

Detailed description

The AI landscape is exploding. Every week there are new AI tools, new promises, and new risks. For business and management people without a software development background, it feels impossible to stay top of mind. It’s like finding the needle in the haystack: which of the tools and techniques actually work and how to safely use them? This training helps you in answering those questions. In two intensive half-day sessions, you’ll discover how AI tools like Claude, Claude Cowork, and Perplexity can eliminate repetitive work, sharpen your decision-making, and free up time for what actually matters. No coding required. No developer skills needed. Just practical, hands-on experience with tools you can use from day one. But this isn’t just about the tools. OpenValue’s own experience working with enterprises in regulated industries has taught us a crucial lesson: the technology is ready, but the real challenge for AI implementation is organizational. Think about governance, legal frameworks, GDPR, the EU AI Act, and company policies and many more restrictions. These are the hurdles that slow AI adoption down, not the technology itself. This training shows you how to navigate those hurdles, so you can use AI confidently and responsibly.

Why join this training?

The problem: too many tools, not enough clarity Every week there’s a new AI tool promising to “revolutionize” your workflow, but which ones actually deliver? Business and management professionals are expected to “start using AI” but nobody told them how to do it safely Hours are still lost on repetitive admin: status reports, meeting summaries, data formatting, email drafting, document analysis Fear of data leakage is real, because what happens when you paste confidential business data into an AI tool? Legal and compliance departments are still catching up, and most professionals don’t know what’s allowed and what is not.

The insight; it’s not about the technology

OpenValue works with large enterprises in banking, finance, healthcare, and government. Our experience shows that the AI technology is already ready for production use. The real challenges are organizational: governance frameworks that haven’t been updated, legal departments navigating genuinely new territory, GDPR and EU AI Act compliance that nobody has fully figured out yet, and company policies that haven’t caught up with what’s possible. This training addresses both sides; practical tool skills AND the organizational, legal, and governance knowledge you need to use AI responsibly in your business.

Prerequisites

This training is designed for business and management people without software development skills or knowledge who want to use AI in their daily work. Work smart, not hard. No programming background is required because we focus exclusively on tools that are easy to use and require no technical setup.

Target audience

This training is suited for:

• Managers, team leads, and directors across any business function
• Finance & accounting professionals (controllers, financial analysts, accountants)
• Project managers and program managers
• Business analysts and consultants
• Operations and logistics managers
• HR managers and recruitment leads
• Marketing and communications managers
• E-commerce and retail managers
• Legal and compliance professionals curious about AI in their domain
• Entrepreneurs

Industries Banking & finance, insurance, accounting, e-commerce, logistics & supply chain, healthcare administration, legal, government & public sector, education management. The exercises are designed to be adaptable to participants’ own domains.

Learning goals

After completing both sessions, participants will be able to:

• Separate AI hype from reality. Understand what works, what doesn’t, and what’s just marketing.
• Use AI tools (Claude, Claude Cowork, Perplexity) confidently for everyday business tasks, no coding needed
• Creating effective skills that provide details on how you want the AI agent to handle your tasks and produce useful, accurate, and relevant results
• Automate repetitive administrative work: reporting, email drafting, data analysis, document summarization
• Understand the risks: data privacy, confidentiality, AI hallucinations, GDPR, EU AI Act, and corporate governance
• Navigate organizational hurdles: governance frameworks, legal approval processes, and compliance requirements
• Evaluate AI output critically. Know when to trust it and when to verify
• Identify AI opportunities within their own role and build a personal AI productivity workflow
• Make informed decisions about which data is safe to use with AI tools and which should stay offline

Training outline

Session 1: Foundations & First Hands-On (4 hours)

Theme: From overwhelmed to productive, navigating the AI landscape

Block 1: The AI landscape in short (45 min)

• What is AI, what is a Large Language Model, and why does it matter for your business?
• Live demo: what AI can do today, and what it absolutely cannot (managing expectations)
• The tools that matter for business people: Claude, Claude Cowork, Perplexity, what’s what and when to use which
• Why most AI tools are NOT designed for business use, and which ones are
• The overwhelming AI landscape: how to select the right tool

Block 2: Creating effective skills: the easiest way to create consistency! (45 min)

• Creating a reusable instruction set that tells an AI agent how you work!
• Autonomy of a good skill, description trigger, clear instructions, and reference files
• Hands-on exercise: participants build a skill. AI agents make creating skills easy!
• Common mistakes: skills that are too broad, too vague, or that lack context.
• Layering skills: how combining two or three simple skills handles complex multi-step workflows without you orchestrating anything.
• Tips and tricks: getting consistent, high-quality results every time

Break (15 min)

Block 3: AI for everyday business tasks, hands-on workshop (90 min)

• Exercise: Draft professional emails, meeting agendas, and status reports in seconds
• Exercise: Summarize long documents, contracts, or reports, extract what matters by using Claude integrations in Microsoft Office tools or Google workspace
• Exercise: Turn messy data into structured insights (no spreadsheet formulas needed)
• Exercise: Research and competitive analysis with Perplexity, get cited answers, fast
• Exercise: Generate presentation outlines and one-pagers from rough notes
• Group discussion: what surprised you? What are the limits? What would you NOT trust AI with?

Block 4: Wrap-up & homework (30 min)

• Key takeaways from Session 1
• Homework: identify 3 repetitive tasks in your own work and solve them with AI before Session 2
• Tool access, AI tokens, and setup instructions for between-session practice

Session 2: Advanced Use Cases, Risks & Your AI Strategy (4 hours)

Theme: Going deeper, agentic AI, governance, and building your personal AI workflow

Block 5: Homework review & show and tell (30 min)

• Participants share their homework experiences: what worked, what didn’t, what surprised them
• Group learning: tips and tricks discovered between sessions

Block 6: Claude Cowork & agentic AI, the next level (60 min)

• What is agentic AI? From chatbot to autonomous assistant that works for you
• Demo: Claude Cowork, AI that works with your files, your desktop, your tools (no coding needed)
• Exercise: Use Claude Cowork to automate a multi-step business task from start to finish
• When to delegate to AI and when to stay in control, the human-in-the-loop principle The difference between AI tools you type into vs. AI agents that work autonomously

Break (15 min)

Block 7: Risks, governance & responsible AI use (45 min)

• The organizational bottleneck, why governance (and not technology) is slowing AI adoption
• Data privacy and confidentiality: what can you share with AI tools and what should NEVER leave your organization?
• GDPR compliance: practical guidelines for using AI with personal and business data
• The EU AI Act: what it means for your business and what you need to know right now
• AI hallucinations: why AI sometimes confidently gives wrong answers, and how to catch it
• Real-world case: how enterprises navigate legal, compliance, and governance hurdles (based on OpenValue’s experience in regulated industries)
• How to overcome organizational resistance: building trust incrementally, getting executive buy-in, working with legal and compliance
• Corporate AI policies: what should your organization have in place before rolling out AI tools?
• The risks of giving AI tools access to your files, documents, and business systems

Block 8: Build your personal AI action plan (60 min)

• Each participant identifies their top 5 AI use cases for their own role
• Create a personal “AI productivity playbook” with prompts and workflows to take back to the office
• Governance checklist: what to verify with legal/compliance before implementing AI in your team
• Group sharing: inspire each other with ideas across domains
• Next steps and continued learning resources

Course format

This is an in-person classroom training that can be delivered at an OpenValue office or as an in-company training around the world. Feel free to contact us at training@openvalue.nl for inquiries for in-company training offerings for your team(s).

Certification

Participants receive a certificate of completion upon finishing the training.

Next steps

For more information about expanding your knowledge past this course, check out our entire training portfolio at www.openvalue.training or in your learning management system. Contact us at training@openvalue.nl for personal learning advice or customized on-demand training and just contact your OpenValue trainer during the training course.

Training material

What participants need

• A laptop with internet access
• Willingness to bring real examples from their own work for the exercises
• No software installation or technical setup required, all tools are browser-based

Provided training material

• Exercise handouts
• Personal AI action plan template
• Governance and compliance checklist for AI adoption
• AI tokens for hands-on exercises and homework period

About our trainers

Ramon Wieleman is Director at OpenValue Group and founder of Code Nomads. With a background in organizational communication and experience in the software industry, he focuses on helping professionals apply new technologies in a practical and responsible way.

Tom Wigleven is Principal Engineer at OpenValue. With a background as a senior software engineer and Scrum Master, he specializes in applying AI in real-world development and business contexts, and has led multiple AI integration trainings.

Practical details