Small businesses in the UK have always believed they have an uphill struggle against the industry-leading corporations, with many feeling they cannot compete with the mass investment put into every area of success and opting to focus on core essentials that separate them from the big boys.
Many small businesses feel that the recent growth of AI in business is something that is out of their reach or something that will not provide for their business needs at this small business juncture. However, the smaller-scale adoption of ethics of AI in business has seen a rise in 2024 and is set to shape the future.
Entrepreneurs and small businesses are harnessing AI to help drive growth and gain a competitive advantage. Everything from generative AI-powered chatbots to machine learning commerce platforms is helping to revolutionize small business operations, with plans for AI to drive accounting, marketing, and customer relations soon.
Currently, in this early time for AI for the enterprise, 80% of small business owners fully realise the potential of AI in their operations. Improved systems, increased efficiencies, time focus, and valuable insight are direct results of enterprise generative AI.
Small Steps to Big Results
With lawmakers ensuring AI policy promotes inclusion and innovation, small businesses are now in the driving seat to steer the UK economy positively with generative AI. Starting with AI-powered tools, a small UK business can analyze market trends faster and at a larger scale to enhance its decision-making at the earliest possible stage. Machine learning can simultaneously analyze increasing volumes of customer data, helping to improve products and services to attract and appeal to a wider customer base.
Small businesses can also get an advantage through AI for large enterprises by using AI-powered data analytics, allowing for the extraction of deeper insights from large datasets to support plans for a stronger business model, with fair pricing and solid customer service.
Admittedly, while AI for small businesses has presented incredible growth opportunities, it poses tougher challenges. Small business owners will have to keep up with their digital skills to effectively use and manage AI technology, which will mean investment into AI literacy, upskilling, and reskilling. Small business owners may also have to leverage AI information with their expertise, intuition, and insights when analysing AI-derived outputs.
Improved Operations
One area small business owners are seeing the potential for improvement is in AI-powered tools, such as chatbots that handle routine customer enquiries and automate responses.
They also realize the potential for AI in streamlining operations through automating data-heavy tasks like inventory management and accounting. AI is already being utilised to improve workforce and budget management efficiencies, saving hours of manual review by implementing AI tools that sort through job applications and present the top applicants.
AI tools enable small businesses to enhance their team performance, support remote working, and provide insight into employee training and development – as well as support budget optimization on company spending.
Just how big will AI in business get for small UK businesses soon?
This is a topic of discussion at the UK’s premier Enterprise AI & Big Data event in London on June 19, 2024. Are you a small business owner looking at the potential and benefit of ethics of AI in business? Guest speakers at this event will provide insight and answers to the burning questions on AI and business growth.
