The real value of AI for small businesses 

As a small business owner, finding ways to benefit from technology is probably always on your mind.  

You’ve likely heard how AI is leading the charge towards time savings, higher accuracy, and becoming more adaptable. But for all the hype, it’s important to know that adopting AI for the sake of it won’t bring the results you’re aiming for.  

Instead, a considered and intentional approach to applying it to specific areas of your business, will deliver its real value. 

In this article, we share some of the lessons from our e-book, “Practical ways to use AI in your small business.” 

Read the full e-book for a solid grounding in AI and learn how businesses like yours are making the most of the opportunity. 

AI is more accessible than you think 

If you have limited resources, the idea of integrating AI might seem challenging—maybe even intimidating. But the truth is, it offers exciting opportunities for growth and innovation, and can enhance how you work. It’s also incredibly accessible and can be used at whatever level you find comfortable. 

“Embracing AI doesn’t mean using AI to replace what could be done by a person; it means thinking about how we can use it to augment what we already do.” 

Zing Tseng, Author, Presenter and Podcaster 

While this is an exciting prospect, AI should be applied in specific and practical ways, and by doing so you’ll unlock several advantages—form freeing up hours of weekly admin time to surfacing data-driven insights that inform your decisions.   

You may have heard of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Codex. These are often used to create content based on prompts. Whether you’re writing content, generating reports, or creating visual branding and designs, these models are highly flexible and useful for small businesses.  

Signing up and using these kinds of tools is usually very simple too, and many offer free versions that you can experiment with before buying. 

Specific tools are the most powerful  

Though these broad tools are incredibly flexible and useful for small businesses, you’ll find the real power of generative AI in solutions that have been purpose-built for specific business disciplines. 

Applying generative AI to accounting for example, transforms your ways of working to be exceptionally more efficient, accurate, and informed in this area.

Another advantage is that they use your own business data to generate responses. This makes them extremely precise in their outputs and more convenient to use, as they understand context specific to your business. 

Dedicated tools also provide extra security by not synching your proprietary data to the public repository that tools like ChatGPT learn from, making them lower risk. 

Where to start with adopting AI 

To steady your approach to adopting AI, download ‘Practical ways to use AI in your small business’. This gives you a starting point by covering: 

• Whether AI is right for you 

• Reasons to consider using AI in your small business 

• Examples of how it’s already being used 

• Considerations of specific generative AI  

• Sneak peek at Sage Copilot capabilities 

• The role AI will play in the future for small businesses 

Learn how AI could solve your unique challenges and get you the results you’re aiming for.  

By educating yourself first, you’ll feel more confident in understanding where and how AI could solve the specific challenges your business is facing. This will help you take that considered and intentional approach to getting the most value out of this powerful technology.