In many ways, AI is the great equaliser. With many off the shelf solutions such as Microsoft Copilot expediting deployment, AI is not just for large companies with deep pockets.
In many ways, SMBs have more to gain from AI. If you’re running a smaller team than your larger competitors, the productivity of every employee becomes even more important.
Just one person in a critical team freed from admin could instead have time to focus on upselling, customer satisfaction, or innovation that will drive your business forward – all without having to increase your headcount.
However, the stats so far are not encouraging. British Chambers of Commerce says up to 50% of SMEs have no plans to use AI technologies in the UK. For many countries, the stats are even worse.
But it needn’t be this way. SMBs have a lot to gain, and even small implementations of AI could have a big impact.
‘Wait and see’ attitude risks inertia
In an article at The Guardian, commentator Gene Marks backed up the perception that small businesses are not adopting AI. He pointed the finger at a lack of trust in the output and wrote that most small businesses were “playing” and learning about AI tools but were sceptical of the output.
Taking time to explore the tools and acquaint yourself with them is not bad. But while caution is understandable, it shouldn’t be at the cost of doing nothing. Caution also shouldn’t be a cover for sticking with the status quo, which will always be the easier option.
AI tools are already having a positive impact on companies, and the risk is that your competitors will be pushing forward while you wait and see.
Deployment of AI for SMBs needn’t be as long as companies follow the basics:
- Ensure your AI has good data to draw from; a hallucination by a free AI tool searching the web is not the same as reliable data that you control within your own systems.
- Continually evaluate and iterate your AI projects to ensure improvement and that the project tackles the issue you set out to achieve.
- Ensure you choose the right use cases for your project.
The last is possibly the most important point: don’t get an AI tool and look for something to solve. Instead, identify what you want to achieve, what process you want to automate then look to the tool to solve that issue.
When it comes to ensuring the right sort of project, a good place to start is to look for reasonably basic tasks that are repeated regularly with little variation. You may not want to use AI to prescribe medications, but automating a form that needs to be filled in 20 times a day by an agent would be a low-risk and high-reward process to improve.
Use low-code tools to make a start
SMBs don’t need to go out and buy a fancy AI solution or hire teams of developers. Low-code tools such as Microsoft Copilot Studio reduce the barrier to bringing AI to your business.
Copilot Studio is a low-code tool that allows organisations to design intelligent, dynamic, and connected AI assistants, in short, custom Copilots. And with a number of templates ready to go, the path to implementing AI is shortened further.
As it’s a graphical, low-code tool, you don’t need developers to start building custom copilots. All you need to do is describe the copilot you want in plain language.
Find out more about getting started with Copilot Studio in our article Microsoft Copilot Studio: The power to create custom AI assistants for your business.
AI could improve employee retention
It’s safe to say there will be scepticism about AI among employees, but it actually has the potential to improve employee satisfaction and retention.
The loss of an employee can be particularly problematic for smaller businesses, along with the resulting costs of recruitment and training for the replacement. One figure puts the price at 6 – 9 months of an employee’s salary just to replace them and that’s without taking into account the cost of disruption.
So why would you want your employees working on mundane tasks that provide them no satisfaction and don’t help your business grow?
By removing the mundane and allowing employees to feel more engaged by working on higher priority, more rewarding work, there’s a strong case to be made for AI improving employee satisfaction and retention.
AI as the new ‘middleware’
Not only can AI be a low-cost solution to deploy, but it can potentially avoid or reduce IT expenditure and maximise the use of existing investments.
Siloed information is a problem for most organisations, and for SMBs that have gradually brought systems online, this problem may be particularly acute.
The options then become a rip-and-replace with a system that covers all functions in one platform or developing some form of a solution that brings together data with a new front end. Both have the potential to be costly, and the former, in particular, has the potential to be disruptive.
But in a recent chat with CloudClevr, AI futurist Ant Morse discussed how a company had used AI to interface with four disparate systems to bring faster responses to agents. Previously, they had to keep customers on hold while they checked those four systems, but now, with a voice agent, they can ask a question and get a considerably faster response. They don’t even need to type the request, they can just ask the agent and get a response on what they need.
This makes customers happier and frees up the agent’s time – all without needing to replace their existing systems. For small businesses, this offers significant benefits.
SMBs have a lot to gain from AI – if they take the opportunity
Thanks to solutions such as Copilot Studio, the barrier to implementation is low. AI has the power to reduce administrative tasks, improve employee satisfaction and leverage your existing IT investments for greater gain.
While many SMBs are taking a wait-and-see approach, there’s little reason why they can’t get started now. The potential rewards are just too good to ignore.
