16 • Tech, Software & Marketing
New Year Business Guide - brought to you by APL Media • Wednesday 14 January 2026 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE
Te review bottleneck: where your AI productivity gains go to die
AI is helping you create documents faster. But is it really making you more productive?
If you’re in financial services or professional services, your junior team members are probably already using AI to accelerate the early stages of drafting documents. They’re asking Copilot to extract
insights from databases and reports — turning a morning’s investigation into a two-minute skim read. ChatGPT might be suggesting content for their PowerPoint slides or helping them tweak the messaging of memos. But the latest UpSlide research
shows that someone else is paying the price for those productivity gains — your senior team members. Juniors might draft documents.
However, the important job of verifying that they’re accurate, on-brand and high-quality enough to reach your stakeholders? That task, of course, falls to your most experienced employees. For them, increased junior
productivity puts them under pressure to review and approve documents at the same rapid rate. As a result, AI isn’t empowering
them. It’s adding to their workload. UpSlide calls this the ‘review
bottleneck’: the stage where all these AI-enabled documents must be checked, refined and signed off by seniors. Some of this review work is
strategic and crucial for your competitive advantage: adding nuance, strengthening narratives
and sharing seniors’ expertise with junior employees. But seniors often spend just as
much time on less strategic tasks; think flagging an incorrect font on a header or checking that figures are consistent throughout a document. These small tasks have always been
a drain on senior time — and that drain is growing as AI accelerates the rate of document creation. That’s why 83% of those surveyed
in UpSlide’s study, The AI Paradox in M&A: The Senior Squeeze, said that AI is increasing — not reducing — the pressure on senior staff to ensure quality and accuracy.
FIXING THE REVIEW BOTTLENECK WITH END-TO-END AI INTEGRATION To see real productivity gains from AI and avoid this senior review bottleneck, teams need to consider every part of the workflow when implementing AI. It’s not just about accelerating
junior productivity, but helping senior team members keep up with this increased volume of output — and making more room for them to add strategic value for your stakeholders.
Tese tools are integrated into your Microsoft 365 ribbon so teams can create, refine and review documents where the work happens
UpSlide helps companies like
KPMG, UniCredit, BNP Paribas and Rothschild & Co create top- tier, on-brand documents faster in Microsoft 365 with automation and AI. Working with those clients has earned the company a 4.6/5 G2 score and a 98% customer retention rate. With UpSlide, you can accelerate
the entire document creation workflow for everyone, using AI- powered tools to lift the reviewing burden for seniors. Your team can: • Create polished, on-brand documents faster by accessing approved slides, content and templates directly in PowerPoint — plus AI-powered checks for consistency and branding.
• Keep charts, tables and figures accurate and up to date with automated links between Excel and PowerPoint.
• Streamline collaboration and review using integrated tools like Track Changes to simplify feedback and final sign-off, or Datapack to automatically generate sanitised Excel sheets that you can share with clients. Most importantly, these tools
are integrated into your Microsoft 365 ribbon. That means teams can create, refine and review documents right where the work happens — in PowerPoint, Excel, Word or Power BI. So, you can create high-
quality documents that support your reputation, credibility and competitive advantage — and use AI to boost productivity for everyone in your business.
Ready to end the reviewing bottleneck with UpSlide?
Book a discovery call or visit:
upslide.com
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