I work with compliance and regulatory adherence. It’s a role that involves many different types of tasks — some days are purely about project management, other days are focused on laws and regulations, and sometimes it’s all about communication — getting others to understand the core concepts and apply them in their daily work. The days are very varied and depend on the questions raised by colleagues or the projects we are running.

Most of the time is spent in front of a screen, as the organisation is spread across the entire country. This means that digital tools play a crucial role in our everyday work — primarily to support communication and training, but also to quickly locate and summarise information.

Another important perspective is risk management — we need to understand the risks that exist and the types of incidents that could potentially occur. To get a better understanding, we need to observe how different tools function, for example, those that employees use in their daily work, and consider what risks and opportunities their use might present to a company.

I use most of the applications on the list in my private life, but only some of them at work, as the use of applications is strictly regulated in a professional context. However, I have tried out a few of the applications I wasn’t familiar with (or hadn’t used before) to see if they might be useful in my work — or even in my personal life.

Below are my five selected applications:

Issuu https://issuu.com/

Issuu is a digital publishing platform that creates flip-book documents that are easy and attractive to read. Documents are created from PDFs, such as reports or other documents of a more boring nature. I uploaded a dull legal text to see if it would turn it into something more engaging. The tool can create a flip-through book, Instagram posts, and for example, a flip book that you can charge money for. However, I think the tool still seems fairly simple, and in my opinion, Microsoft’s standard solution delivers a relatively similar result.

I had hoped it would have an AI feature that could transform the text, analyse it, and make it more enjoyable to read. As experts, we often create rather lengthy texts, but for someone who just wants to understand the core message, they are far too long. That’s why I hope they’ll soon release an AI add-on that builds on the text and summarises it in a way that’s easy for someone to further edit — that’s something I would be interested in exploring further!

Jodel – https://jodel.com/en/
Jodel is an anonymous, local mobile app where users can post short messages, images, or videos called “Jodels.” These are visible to other users within roughly a 10 km radius of your location. This makes it rather difficult to use in my day-to-day work. I downloaded this discussion app to broaden my perspective and better understand young people, since they are the main users of the platform.

The app is primarily used by young adults. It is important to understand the types of values this target group holds in order to keep up with social developments and assess potential future risks. By using the hashtag #seriöst (“#serious”), users can ask others to respond respectfully and without judgment, which is a significant difference from many similar apps where discussions can quickly become harsh. There’s a wide variety of questions and comments shared on the app in different channels, and in order for a post or comment to become popular, it needs to capture the users’ attention and interest. This requires a certain skill in how the question is phrased.

I probably wouldn’t use this app as part of my daily work directly, but rather as a source of inspiration and a way to stay in touch with the discussions and moral perspectives of the younger generation.

Iauditor – https://safetyculture.com/iauditor/

SafetyCulture offers a mobile and web-based platform for inspections and audits related to safety, quality, and work environment. You can easily create customisable checklists and make your inspections readily accessible in a mobile application. The tool seems very useful for industries and similar sectors that operate under strict quality requirements and need to follow certain standards closely, where even small mistakes can be costly.

For small businesses, they offer an affordable plan, which is a positive aspect. They also have AI features, such as generating certain types of training content. I haven’t tested the AI-training part yet, but I would assume it needs to be tailored to each company, which may require quite a bit of manual adjustment afterward.If you’re transitioning from paper-based methods or an Excel sheet to a digital tool, the step feels relatively small. However, if an existing system is being replaced, I would want to test it in more detail first.

Shortcut https://www.tryshortcut.ai/

Fundamental Research Labs, a startup from MIT, has launched a new AI tool called Shortcut, designed to mimic and enhance Microsoft Excel. Microsoft has as well started integrating more features into their own tools, but this AI tool has proven to be very useful—especially if you’re somewhat proficient with Excel. And the best part is, you don’t even need to be advanced in using Macros, this tool helps you do that and much more.

It uses Excel’s familiar interface and functions but includes an AI assistant on the side for navigation. I can constantly interact with the model and create quite advanced models. The advantage is that it really helps me build Excel models quite quickly. The downside, for me at least for now, is that I’m not entirely sure the models it creates are always accurate. I need to test further to understand exactly how it works and build more use cases. But it looks very promising.

The downside, of course, is that it’s a relatively new company with only limited funding behind it. Since Microsoft is also continuing to develop its models, something similar is likely to come from their side as well. It takes a little time to get the results—several minutes—but you can work on something else in the meantime, and in the end, it can save you a lot of work when the system creates your macros for you—you don’t have to do it yourself!

DeepL – https://www.deepl.com/en/translator

DeepL is an AI-based translation service. I only tried the free version, so I haven’t explored all the extended features the tool offers. However, the tests I conducted turned out quite well — it can sometimes be quite difficult to get texts right in Finnish specifically, as the grammar is so complex that it easily reveals when the writer isn’t a native speaker.

I tested it on some legal texts (or parts of them), and it worked well — though I would have needed the paid version to test an entire document. The advantages of DeepL are that you can quickly translate complex texts into another language — which can be useful in many situations, for example when you have access to a text in a language you don’t master — such as a contract in German or similar. However, as with all AI tools, you need to be cautious about the information you put in and what data it contains. Only in the Pro version it is possible to opt out of having your data processed and stored.

DeepL also offers a tool for improving your writing and tailoring it to your audience. This can be useful if you want to produce a professional result quickly but are short on time. It helps you rephrase and rethink — today, I often use a colleague to get feedback on my texts, but in the future, I might be able to brainstorm with AI instead.

#Self-evaluation

I’ve discovered that there are quite a few social media apps I use regularly and have tested. Some I’ve stopped using. I’m often quick to try out new solutions, but if they don’t give me much value, I tend to give up rather quickly. This has sometimes led to me losing interest before the application manages to overcome its initial technical hurdles.

I’m curious about finding even more AI-driven solutions within my field. I’ve tried Googling about this, but haven’t found many interesting ones that match what I’m looking for. I’ll keep searching—there must be something out there. I have found some solutions for certain industries, but they tend to be very niche-focused. It will be interesting to follow how developments in this area will change my everyday life as well. In any case, I’ll make sure to continue testing and exploring, even as I get older.

This course has really reminded me of the importance of staying curious, constantly searching, and talking to people around me about what solutions might be interesting and whether there’s anything relevant to my own industry.