How the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency streamlined deep work across 8+ teams
with Perplexity Enterprise Pro
How the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency streamlined deep work across 8+ teams
with Perplexity Enterprise Pro
8+ teams
8+ teams
teams using Perplexity Enterprise Pro
teams using Perplexity Enterprise Pro
93% adoption
adoption rate among
the pilot group
adoption rate among
the pilot group
150+ hours
hours saved
across users
hours saved
across users
How Lambda streamlined technical workflows across 15+ teams with Perplexity Enterprise Pro
8+ teams
teams using Perplexity Enterprise Pro
93% adoption
adoption rate among
the pilot group
150+ hours
hours saved
across users
CUSTOMER TESTIMONIAL
“We’re a nonprofit with a lean team and big mission. So, Perplexity is a force multiplier for us, and speeds the discovery of specific information we need. Day-to-day, Perplexity helps us master the mundane.”
“We’re a nonprofit with a lean team and big mission. So, Perplexity is a force multiplier for us, and speeds the discovery of specific information we need. Day-to-day, Perplexity helps us master the mundane.”
“We’re a nonprofit with a lean team and big mission. So, Perplexity is a force multiplier for us, and speeds the discovery of specific information we need. Day-to-day, Perplexity helps us master the mundane.”
John Bobo, Chief Operating & Innovation Officer
John Bobo, Chief Operating & Innovation Officer
John Bobo, Chief Operating & Innovation Officer
The Problem
The Problem
Boosting agency capabilities while maintaining high security standards
Boosting agency capabilities while maintaining high security standards
A couple years ago, John Bobo, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s Chief Operating and Innovation Officer, began updating the organization’s legacy systems. He sensed AI tech like ChatGPT was at a “notable technological inflection point” and could make USADA more efficient. But he also knew that before deploying an AI platform across the organization, he needed to overcome the uncertainties surrounding AI.
“At the time, many news articles were focused on hallucinations and incorrect or misleading results. I wanted to empower people with AI to master the mundane and get more time in their day to focus on the larger mission.”
So, he decided to run a pilot program to discover potential AI use cases for USADA and build the team’s confidence in the technology. However, for this pilot program, he needed a partner that met four non-negotiable requirements:
Accuracy — With a lean team working daily for integrity in sports, USADA can’t use a platform that experiences hallucinations. Any errors introduced by an AI tool would damage their organization’s credibility to advocate for clean athletes. “We needed a platform with clear citations and links to source material, so we could verify results.”
Productivity — USADA conducts daily operations in finance, education, legal, coms, operations, international, HR and IT. Busyness of daily tasks takes away valuable time that can be used to progress the nonprofit’s mission. Without compromising its rigorous standards, USADA needed AI to free up some extra “brain space,” allowing the team to focus on problem-solving and innovation.
Security — USADA implemented its first Ai Policy that no athlete data is ever allowed to be used on an AI platform. “Thanks to Ai, you can easily create synthetic data, so no personal information of a real person is required.” To ensure greater confidentiality, John also needed an AI tool that wouldn't train its models with USADA’s data — a common practice for LLMs.
Flexibility — To address all their different use cases, John wanted USADA to try multiple LLMs. But, with so many new models and AI platforms cropping up, he didn’t have the time to vet them all. What he needed was a platform that helped everyone learn about AI and different LLMs as fast as possible.
Luckily, Perplexity Enterprise Pro met all USADA’s needs.
The Cleveland Cavaliers were ready to use AI to bring the future of work to their organization, allowing Team Members to take the initiative to find answers to critical questions faster.
“We knew automation wouldn’t solve every use case,” says Ben Levicki, the Cavaliers’ AI Solutions Architect, “But we also knew that AI could increase efficiency and productivity, boost skill enhancement with instant insights and empower employee growth.”
The Cavs’ previous internal solution, an AI chatbot, was secure and private but required ongoing development efforts that slowed implementation. As a one-person AI team, Ben hoped to eliminate this patched-together solution and advance to a comprehensive AI search engine witha “succinct UI that pulls in documents, images and video assets.” His list of must-haves included:
Flexibility: The Cavs needed a solution that aligned with its wide-ranging use cases — everything from researching partnerships to closing knowledge gaps for its data team.
Security: With zero-party data as one of their competitive advantages, the Cavs required a tool that didn’t train its AI models on their proprietary internal data sets.
Accuracy: Reliability was also a concern. Most tools are prone to hallucinations (i.e., incorrect or misleading results). To get buy-in from the entire team, Ben needed a model that was known for generating accurate and verified information sources.
In other words, Ben wanted a solution that could leverage AI’s full capabilities and boost the organization’s productivity.
The Solution
The Solution
Underwriting USADA’s mission to protect the rights of clean athletes and provide an even-playing field for sport
Underwriting USADA’s mission to protect the rights of clean athletes and provide an even-playing field for sport
With Perplexity Enterprise Pro in its toolkit, USADA has a powerful fact-checker and knowledge-finder to supercharge its mission. John explains, “We’re in the sports integrity business. If we find doping in a sport, we’ve got to make the hard call, so it’s critical that we’ve dotted our i’s and crossed our t’s.”
To ensure an ideal fit, USADA piloted the solution with 30 employees with a host of specialties from finance, education, legal, coms, operations, international, HR and IT. The test group quickly discovered several benefits:
Use Case #1: Real-time policy research
The education department quickly found research on adult learning principles along with updates and current events in less than 30 seconds. Even better, the information is trustworthy, with citations for all search results.
Use Case #2: Quick summaries and analysis
USADA’s staff uses Perplexity Enterprise Pro to analyze large datasets, translate documents, refine video transcripts, and extract key takeaways from complex articles without using USADA’s data to train the LLM. Likewise, the tech department uses AI to instantly transform complex instructions for training non-technical workers — a task that used to take hours.
Use Case #3: Deep learning
Perplexity Enterprise Pro’s concise, readable, and detailed search results help USADA employees quickly get answers to their questions—like advice on how to create better organizational systems overviews. The AI even prompts team members with follow-up questions, encouraging them to dig deeper into each topic’s nuances.
Use Case #4: Efficient upskilling
John says an employee in the legal department used the AI platform to create a 40-question practice test for the notary public exam, which she passed on the first try. USADA’s Tech Team even boosted their coding skills by asking different language models for solutions. With it, they were able to get the answers needed to complete code without looping in a developer.
These benefits add up, says John. Rather than squandering time on basic tasks, Perplexity Enterprise Pro helps USADA solve administrative problems and diagnose systemic issues. According to John, this “mastery of the mundane” unblocks employees, so they can spend more time on the knowledge work that advances USADA’s cause.
“In a world of information overload, Perplexity’s Focus functionality is invaluable,” John says. “And our teams have embraced all the advantages that Perplexity brings.”
Given the flexibility, security, and accuracy needs of the Cavs, Perplexity Enterprise Pro became the Cavs’ number-one pick. Once Ben started using Perplexity, he saw that onboarding fellow organizational teams would be technologically easy. The challenge in every organization with a new process is getting buy-in. To ensure Team Members understood the full benefits of Perplexity Enterprise Pro, Ben met with each team to explain how the tool could improve their daily performance and efficiency. One perfect example is that he showed the IT team how to simplify explanations of technical topics for non-technical stakeholders, saving time and increasing the ease of novice understanding using Perplexity.
The use case that most attracted teams to Perplexity was far simpler. They witnessed firsthand how Perplexity’s advanced web search empowers everyone in the Cavs organization to take research into their own hands. As Ben affirms, “Perplexity Out-Googles Google.”
Perplexity’s AI search engine sifts through clutter and closes knowledge gaps. “That’s where all of the magic begins,” Ben says. “Perplexity augments repetitive, mundane tasks, so team members can focus on human skills like critical thinking, problem-solving and empathy.” In other words, the team spends less time searching and more time on deep work. The advantages that Perplexity offers in search also include that it:
Enables Mixed-Media Searches: The ability to add documents and images to searches allows anyone in the organization to get results tailored to their needs. For example, the development team can drop a graph about ticket sales into Perplexity, and the AI summarizes the document’s emerging trends in one click — without sacrificing data privacy (unlike other AI tools, Perplexity never retains critical customer data).
Lowers the Learning Curve: Perplexity is LLM agnostic, so AI beginners and experienced users alike get immediate value from the tool — whether they need an in-depth detailed response or natural-sounding answers.
Saves Valuable Time: Rather than drafting separate knowledge-based documentation for each of the Cavaliers’ departments, Team Members can attach relevant documents to a Perplexity search. The tool then easily parses meaning from this context and provides quick answers. With this functionality, Perplexity streamlines prospecting for the partnerships team by writing bespoke outreach emails in a flash.
Consolidates In-Depth Learnings: Perplexity also makes it easy for the Cavs to analyze long, complex documents, saving months of research. For example, the sustainability team used Perplexity to analyze long environmental studies in the Cleveland area to reveal how climate change may impact their stadium operations. These findings enabled the organization to approach events with sustainability in mind.
With Perplexity, the organization conducts deep research and finds relevant information far faster than before – driving efficiency gains and saving valuable time across teams.
The Result
The Result
Enhanced problem-solving for time savings during the Paris Olympics
Enhanced problem-solving for time savings during the Paris Olympics
Enhanced problem-solving for time savings during the Paris Olympics
These days, John conducts 80% of all his online searches in Perplexity Enterprise Pro, totaling more than 10 net new searches daily. The eight USADA teams that piloted the solution — including the finance, education, legal, coms, operations, international, HR and IT — report similar results.
Following the pilot program’s 93% adoption rate, John plans to replicate that success across the organization’s extended team members. “The ease of parsing through information just makes you hungry for more,” John says, “and it supplies infinite possibilities for the future with a double-digit percentage increase in problem-solving potential.”
From the power users in the tech department using AI to accelerate complex solutions to a manager using it to make travel plans and create meeting agendas, Perplexity Enterprise Pro is a valuable asset for problem-solving across USADA.
“I can't tell you the number of times people are trying to solve a problem, and I ask, Have you tried Perplexity?'" Once they do, John says they find an idea, tool or path to a solution. “And often, they find the solution immediately.”
Perplexity Enterprise Pro has been a huge time-saver for the entire Cavaliers organization. For the partnerships team, email outreach (spanning partner identification, strategy and drafting) used to take up to two hours. Now, this task takes only a few minutes from end-to-end. What’s more, Ben himself saves up to 20 hours per week using Perplexity. He says the tool handles all his repetitive tasks from end-to-end. For instance, when Ben needs information for a presentation, Perplexity swiftly summarizes documents on his behalf. “This makes gathering information nearly effortless,” he says. With these knowledge gaps closed, Ben has been hard at work ramping up the Cavaliers’ AI architecture. Ben calls Perplexity the “best, most secure tool of its kind. It’s proved that it can keep our information safe while augmenting and enriching roles across our organization.”
Best of all, the Cavaliers continue to find innovative use cases to boost efficiency and increase Team Member autonomy with Perplexity. Ben envisions adding the tool to new hire orientation next. This way, new Team Members can ramp up faster and provide value to the organization sooner.
Company name
U.S. Anti-Doping Agency
About the company
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is the national anti-doping organization in the United States for Olympic, Paralympic, Pan American, and Parapan American sports. The organization oversees in-competition and out-of-competition drug testing, results management processes, drug reference resources, and athlete education. Through scientific research, education, and outreach, USADA champions athletes’ rights to clean sport and fair competition.