What Claude is (in plain terms)

• Claude is an AI teammate you can bounce ideas off, delegate tricky work to, and trust with long, messy context. It’s great at problem‑solving, data analysis, coding, and teaming up on projects—like a thoughtful colleague who remembers the details and stays on task. (support.anthropic.com)

• You can pick the right “brain” for the job: Claude Opus 4.1 for deep, complex reasoning and agents; Claude Sonnet 4 for fast, everyday heavy lifting. Both support long context and advanced tooling. (anthropic.com)

Why this matters for a strong Back Office

• Consolidate routine ops: automate reporting, cleanse and reconcile data, prepare briefs, draft SOPs, and keep records tidy—without hopping across five apps. (anthropic.com)

• Speed up cross‑functional work: finance, HR, legal, IT, and ops can share the same assistant that reads big docs, pulls details, and produces clean outputs your team can actually use. (support.anthropic.com)

• Reduce swivel‑chair tasks: Claude connects to Google Workspace and other tools, so data flows into one conversation thread where work gets done. (support.anthropic.com)

• Governance you can stand behind: SSO, SCIM, audit logs, role‑based access, and retention controls are available on business plans for compliance‑friendly rollouts. (support.anthropic.com)

The model lineup (pick what fits)

• Claude Opus 4.1: best for complex reasoning, long chains of thought, agentic workflows, and difficult coding or research tasks. Comes with a 200K token context window. Use it for policy reviews, technical root-cause analysis, or orchestrating multi‑step workflows. (anthropic.com)

• Claude Sonnet 4: fast, capable generalist. Strong on coding, analysis, and broad knowledge tasks—and now supports up to 1M tokens of context on the API for truly large workloads. Use it for high‑volume back office tasks, bulk document synthesis, and day‑to‑day automation. (anthropic.com)

How much context can Claude handle?

• In the Claude apps (paid plans), Claude works with up to 200K tokens—enough for hundreds of pages in one go. Enterprise chat can unlock an enhanced 500K context for Sonnet 4. On the API, Sonnet 4 offers a 1M‑token context (beta) for massive jobs. (support.anthropic.com)

• Translation: you can feed in entire policy binders, long contracts, or large codebases and ask Claude to summarize, compare, or transform them—without constant trimming. (anthropic.com)

Where you can use Claude

• Web app for quick collaboration.

• Desktop app (Mac and Windows) to bring Claude into your daily workflow—with support for desktop extensions and local context.

• Mobile apps on iOS and Android for on‑the‑go capture, dictation, and quick follow‑ups. (support.anthropic.com)

Connect Claude to your tools

• Google Workspace integrations: add Google Docs to chats and projects; connect Gmail and Calendar to summarize threads, draft replies, and prep agendas. (support.anthropic.com)

• Web search and Research: let Claude search the web with citations or run deeper, multi‑step research that can pull from the web and your connected sources. Great for vendor comparisons, policy checks, and market scans. (docs.claude.com)

• Integrations directory and connectors: discover and connect services (including GitHub and more) so your workflows live in one place. (support.anthropic.com)

Artifacts: from ideas to shareable work products

• When your output is more than a chat reply, Claude creates an Artifact—a separate, editable canvas for things like documents, diagrams, HTML pages, charts, or even small interactive apps. You can version, iterate, and export easily. (support.anthropic.com)

• Artifacts are available on Free, Pro, and Max (and on mobile). Teams can browse, customize, and organize artifacts, and even build AI‑powered apps that run on Anthropic’s infra—no API keys for viewers. Perfect for handbooks, dashboards, calculators, and training aids across your back office. (anthropic.com)

Safety, privacy, and responsible use

• Claude is trained with Anthropic’s Constitutional AI approach to be helpful, honest, and harmless, and Anthropic continues to harden defenses (e.g., constitutional classifiers) against jailbreaks and misuse. (anthropic.com)

• Enterprise features include SSO, SCIM, audit logs, role‑based permissions, and retention controls, and Anthropic states that customer inputs/outputs aren’t used to train models by default. (anthropic.com)

• Anthropic also collaborates with the US CAISI and UK AISI on safeguard testing—useful assurance for regulated back office environments. (anthropic.com)

Plans and pricing at a glance (US, as of September 26, 2025)

• Free: try Claude with standard usage.

• Pro: about $20/month for individuals needing more usage and features. (support.anthropic.com)

• Max: higher‑capacity tiers for power users—$100/month (5x Pro) or $200/month (20x Pro). Useful if you’re pushing longer sessions or heavy Claude Code use. (support.anthropic.com)

• Team: for organizations (minimum seats apply) with admin controls, spend caps, projects/knowledge, and more usage. Standard seats are typically $30/month per member on monthly billing; discounted annually. Premium seats add Claude Code. (support.anthropic.com)

• Enterprise: advanced security/compliance controls, higher usage, native GitHub, and a larger 500K chat context with Sonnet 4. Pricing via sales. (support.anthropic.com)

• API: usage‑based pricing by model; Sonnet 4’s 1M‑token context carries premium rates over 200K input tokens. Batch and prompt caching can cut costs. (docs.anthropic.com)

A simple Back Office playbook (what to use Claude for, today)

• Operations

• Build SOPs, checklists, and training artifacts; draft rollout comms; monitor vendor docs and summarize changes. Benefit: fewer manual handoffs, faster adoption. (anthropic.com)

• Finance

• Reconcile CSVs, annotate variances, prepare month‑end narratives, and benchmark pricing with citations via web search/Research. Benefit: cleaner closes and audit‑ready notes. (docs.claude.com)

• HR

• Draft policies, compare benefit plans, prep onboarding guides as artifacts, and build quick FAQ apps employees can self‑serve. Benefit: consistent, self‑serve answers. (support.anthropic.com)

• Legal/Compliance

• Long‑form doc review with structured comparisons; extract obligations; maintain policy libraries in projects. Benefit: scalable first‑pass diligence. (anthropic.com)

• IT/Engineering

• Use Sonnet 4 or Opus 4.1 for code reviews, refactors, and troubleshooting; connect GitHub for deeper context; roll out admin controls and audit logs. Benefit: safer scale‑up and fewer context gaps. (anthropic.com)

• Analytics

• Use the analysis tool to run code for calculations or lightweight data work; turn results into artifacts or reports. Benefit: faster insights, reproducible outputs. (docs.anthropic.com)

Quick start tips

• Pick a model to match the task: Opus 4.1 for complex, multi‑step reasoning; Sonnet 4 for high‑volume day‑to‑day work. (anthropic.com)

• Store recurring materials (policies, templates, vendor terms) in Projects/Knowledge; point Claude at them and let it work from a single source of truth. (support.anthropic.com)

• Use Artifacts for anything you’ll reuse or share—playbooks, checklists, dashboards, or mini‑apps. (support.anthropic.com)

• Enable Google Workspace and Web Search/Research when you need live context and