AI has exploded onto the scene in recent years. There is still plenty of discussion ongoing about it: what it can do, why it’s good, why it’s bad and how businesses should react.
There’s no denying AI is controversial. It is normal for business to feel afraid, especially with concerns around what it means for jobs, security and control.
But despite these concerns, the noise about AI isn’t going away. People will continue to use and talk about AI. Those people might include your staff and your competitors.
When it comes to AI, now is the time to get ahead. By understanding and engaging with AI, you can ensure you are getting the benefits rather than falling behind.
The great news is that the benefits of AI can be especially useful for time-pressed small businesses. We explore how to embrace it in your organisation in a way that encourages effective adoption and long-term wins.
Common barriers for small businesses using AI
Before you can effectively implement AI, it’s crucial to understand the barriers that affect adoption.
Firstly, there’s the fear of the unknown. Some small business leaders do not understand the benefits they can gain from AI. Although there is a lot of talk about AI driving productivity, creativity and accuracy, it can be difficult to envision this for your operations.
That’s why small organisations must find ways to explore the implications of AI within their specific processes and teams to best understand it.
Another common barrier is a lack of staff skills. In an IBM study, 38% of UK business leaders cited this as preventing them adopting AI successfully. Team members need support and training in using AI in the right ways to develop new habits and retrieve value from AI tools.
Next, having access to data is essential for AI to work. It excels at learning from data, enabling it to generate tailored output for your business. So, you need to ensure decent data access across your business and be able to comfortably connect it to your AI tools to win the benefits.
On top of this, some businesses have security concerns around the use of AI, including what it does with private data and whether it can be leveraged by cyber criminals to target your business. Secure tools are crucial to minimising the risk.
Another obstacle is knowing the right use cases for your small business. While there are plenty of inspirational stories about AI uses out there, you need examples tailored to your processes. Without these, it can be hard to know where to start.
Finally, less than half of businesses in the UK report having a dedicated AI strategy. With no strategy, it becomes hard to define how you will use AI and at what scale, which limits adoption.
You may face specific barriers in your organisation. It’s worth spending time speaking to your teams to uncover what those are, including any concerns or negative attitudes. By understanding the obstacles, it will become much easier to address them with the right approach. – Our tips will guide you there.
How not embracing AI leads to small business losses
Data from the government published in 2022 found that only 15% companies had adopted one or more AI solutions. However, gone are the days that AI was only see as something for cutting-edge tech companies. Even the smallest business can benefit.
By using AI, businesses can claim significant time savings. This can include reducing time spent doing manual work (like gathering report data), answering queries (with AI powered chatbots), drafting content (including writing emails) or even just overcoming the creative block often associated with beginning new tasks.
From our own experience of adopting AI, we calculated we would save 1140 hours per week across the whole organisation. This delivers an exceptional return on investment of £48,899.14 per month. If you have limited resource – as many small businesses do – this could allow you to do significantly more without needing to hire or outsource.
AI has other benefits too. Utilising predictive analysis and machine learning, it reduces the risk of error, helping you to improve accuracy and consistency. It’s also great at handling large volumes of data, allowing you to mine the information you need without manually combing through information.
Plus, it has full-time availability, meaning it can work 24/7 and provide assistance to your staff wherever and whenever they need it.
Best yet, you can experience these benefits across business functions. AI tools have countless use cases, impacting everything from HR and marketing to cyber security and development. No matter what your business does, you can guarantee results.
At this point, you may be asking: ‘what does this mean for the people I employ?’. Microsoft research suggests small business employees want to learn about AI. In fact, 79% believe it will bolster their job opportunities.
They want to use AI so much that 80% are using their own tools for work – but less than half are willing to admit it. This is often due to there being no AI policy in their workplace, leading to a feeling of it being taboo.
But when staff use AI tools in secret, they’re more likely to be risky and used with a random approach. This can cause you to lose control of AI usage, potentially harming business performance and security. Getting on top of AI now can reduce this danger.
Furthermore, not using AI can lose you your competitive edge. Among our clients, 75% intended to evaluate AI in the near future to determine how it could benefit them. With more businesses moving towards AI, those who don’t will get left behind.
79% of leaders believe AI adoption is critical to them being competitive. But 61% say they lack the vision to do this.
This shows a clear gap for small businesses between the AI results they need to achieve and where they are now. You need to bridge that gap by embracing AI effectively.
7 tips for embracing AI in your small business
1. Define a business problem and apply AI
One of the main barriers preventing people from adopting AI is knowing how to use it and understanding the benefits. Applying it to a real-life business problem is a good way to tackle both.
Identify a challenge you are facing in your business. It might be a scenario you cannot find a solution for, or a task that is draining resource. Then, use AI to attempt to solve it. Here’s an example below, using Microsoft Copilot:
Monitor how well AI helped. Did it inspire a solution? Did it save you time? Make a record of these wins, as it’ll help you to determine where AI can be valuable.
Remember, you may need to test out different prompts to get the best output, so don’t be disheartened if it doesn’t work at first!
2. Start with a small working group
When utilising AI, it can be hard to define the benefits. We recommend getting a small working group together regularly where you can discuss and brainstorm use cases and share successes.
This is something we do ourselves at Infinity Group and we’ve found it incredibly useful. Aim to get people from across the business in the group to get a better picture of cross-functional use cases. By encouraging these people to experiment with AI and share, you can build a bank of internal use cases and uncover the impact on your operations.
Once you’ve developed an understanding as a group, you can then scale it across the wider business.
3. Follow AI research
Plenty of people are using AI already and more than happy to share their experiences. So, spend time looking into use cases and successes other people and businesses have had. There are many channels you can use for this: AI case studies, Reddit threads, YouTube video and so on. The results may not always be 100% relevant for your specific business, but they can inspire you to test new ideas.
Encourage the rest of your team to do the same to inspire AI usage in their own roles. You may even find tailored workshops, webinars and training resources that enable staff to upskill themselves and improve their confidence. Microsoft has a free AI learning hub which is a great example.
4. Lead by example
In small businesses, employees are in closer contact with leaders. If your leadership team are making the most of AI, it’s therefore more likely to filter down to lower-level employees.
Plus, if leaders are using AI openly, staff are less likely to use it in secret. This improves usage and reduces the risk of unapproved tools.
Start adoption within your leadership team. Make sure they are sharing their wins with AI and creating a buzz around it, so people feel encouraged to follow suit.
5. Find the right tools (and start with free ones)
When embracing AI, you need tools that eliminate risk. Ideally, they should offer maximum protection to your organisation.
Some AI tools – such as ChatGPT – learn from inputs from users across the world, which means they can regurgitate private information you put into it. Aim to find a tool that locks your data down to your organisation only.
You will also want a tool that can connect to your internal data. This will make it easier to learn about your business and deliver relevant output without excessive prompting. Microsoft Copilot, for example, can connect to data across your business.
Finally, focus on free tools initially. While these have limited capabilities, they will enable you to experiment with AI enough to understand the impact for your business. It then becomes easier to pinpoint ROI and warrant paid AI tools that deliver greater results.
6. Endeavour to change habits
It’s hard getting used to AI if you’ve never used it before. It means forcing new habits – like asking AI to do something for you rather than attempting to do it yourself or searching on Google.
Regularly remind your staff to use AI. There are a few ways to do this. Firstly, have people sharing their successes. You might wish to do a weekly AI spotlight where people can talk about how they’ve used AI. This encourages people to join in and use it themselves.
Aim to also create an AI policy internally which dictates how people should use AI. Once people feel they’re allowed to use AI, they’re more likely to do it regularly and confidently.
Finally, remember to be patient. It may take people time to leverage AI effectively – but as you begin to use it more and word spreads, you’ll begin to see the results.
7. Track and document
As you experiment more with AI, remember to record your wins and where you’ve used AI. This will allow you to build your own bank of use cases you can refer people to.
Include the impact experienced as you use AI. Record things like time saved and results achieved. This will make it easier to see progress and identify the rewards of AI.
As you begin to understand the benefits, you will gain a vision of how to use AI. This might include areas it works best, areas you want to increase AI usage or ways you don’t want AI to be used. This will enable you to define your AI strategy that outlays how your business will use it to retain a competitive advantage and drive performance.
As you get more confident using AI, you’ll uncover endless possibilities for it that level up your processes and turn you into an innovative organisation. These tips will get you started so you can excel with AI in the very near future.
Getting AI ready with Microsoft Copilot
When it comes to small businesses and AI adoption, Copilot is one of best tools you can use. Core features with Copilot include:
- Protects your small business data so there’s no risk of breaches or non-compliance
- Works in the Microsoft tools you already use, including Teams, Outlook, Excel and Words
- Applicable across business functions for greater rewards
- Conversational functionality, making it easy to interact with and get output from AI
- Free version available, giving you a chance to experiment before committing to a paid licence
And you can start experimenting with Copilot today. We’ve put together a guide of 45 ways to use Copilot across your core business areas to get you started. Download your copy here.
