For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the integration of generative AI (gen AI) into their operations presents a unique opportunity to enhance efficiency and scale operations without increasing headcount. In this article Adrian Poole, Director Digital Natives UKI at Google Cloud, offers insights into how SMBs can strategically harness gen AI to automate tasks and improve efficiency, helping their workforce to work smarter, not harder.
The massive growth of gen AI presents SMBs with unprecedented opportunities to amplify their workforce capabilities. With gen AI tools increasingly hitting the mainstream, SMBs stand to gain not just immediate operational enhancements but also a transformative shift in their business models by integrating AI tools. For SMBs eager to embrace the gen AI revolution, selecting the appropriate tools becomes a critical decision, one that can dramatically influence their growth trajectory and operational efficiency.
Starting with the right use cases
The process of implementing gen AI begins with a thorough assessment of the business’s current needs, pain points, and long-term objectives. This could range from automating administrative tasks, enhancing customer service, generating content, or gleaning actionable insights from data.
Understanding these requirements allows SMBs to narrow down the gen AI solutions that offer the most relevant features and benefits. However, at present just 7% of UK SMBs consider their level of AI knowledge to be very good. To make positive progress, SMBs need to focus on identifying the areas where AI can deliver the greatest impact.
Ultimately, AI is designed to support human activity including decision making. Using it to improve productivity means looking at tasks that can be easily automated, so that less effort is needed to produce the same great results. One such tool SMBs should consider implementing, for example, is multimodal AI models. These models understand and generate information across various formats like text, images, and video, offer a level of versatility and efficiency that can transform business operations – the ultimate multi-tasker.
This makes them a particularly good fit for SMBs who are already used to employees juggling multiple roles and responsibilities. For instance, a gen AI application that analyses customer feedback across social media, emails, and online reviews can provide comprehensive insights into customer sentiment, enabling SMBs to tailor their offerings and improve customer experience – something which has already seen 75% of SMBs in the UK attribute new customer wins to gen AI.
Similarly, a tool that can process and generate content in different formats can assist in marketing, sales, and customer support, saving SMB teams valuable time.
Enhancing communication and collaboration with AI
In the modern workplace, communication and collaboration are pivotal for the success of SMBs. As these businesses strive to remain agile and innovative, SMBs are looking towards AI to help transform how teams interact, share knowledge, and work together.
One of the most immediate benefits of integrating gen AI into operations is the enhancement of internal communications. Gen AI, can automate the summarisation of meetings, ensuring that key points and decisions are accurately captured and shared with team members, including those unable to attend. This capability not only saves time but also ensures that everyone is aligned on objectives and outcomes.
As gen AI can be trained to understand and address situational needs, it’s able to solve distinct challenges. For SMBs, this could mean cutting down on the time or resources required to complete tasks – allowing employees to be in ‘multiple places at once’ and compete on a larger scale. We’re seeing this already in the US, with a recent survey showing that 63% of SMB leaders reported AI helping to level the playing field for small businesses competing against larger companies.
Educating staff on AI's potential
Despite this potential, research by IONOS in partnership with YouGov reveals that almost half (48%) of UK SMBs state their knowledge of the technology to be fairly poor or very poor, and over half (56%) have never used AI tools before in work. To capitalise on gen AI opportunities, educating staff is a foundational step. This goes beyond mere technical training; it involves gaining a deep understanding of gen AI's capabilities, limitations, and ethical considerations.
The first step in educating staff is to build a broad AI literacy across the organization. This doesn't mean turning every employee into a tech expert but ensuring that everyone understands the basic principles of AI, how it can be applied to their work, and the value it brings. By doing so, businesses create a culture of AI fluency, where staff are comfortable engaging with AI tools and contributing ideas on how to best leverage them.
Equally important is the need to effectively illustrate potential benefits to staff at every level. Moving gen AI discussions from the theoretical to concrete requires demonstrable examples relevant for SMB staff to help with uptake. Plus, the more staff can see gen AI tools in action, the better they will understand how to use them effectively to save time and improve productivity.
Doing more, with less
The future of business is inherently tied to the evolution of AI technologies. For SMBs, this represents an unparalleled opportunity to enhance efficiency, boost innovation, and deepen customer engagement. By educating staff, selecting the right tools, and encouraging a culture of ethical AI use, businesses can leverage gen AI to not only optimize their operations but also to achieve sustainable growth and gain competitive advantage. With this foundation, gen AI can play a crucial role augmenting human capabilities with AI's computational power to tackle challenges, unlock new opportunities, and achieve goals that were once considered beyond the reach of SMBs.
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