How AI can help your small business

Despite the hype around artificial intelligence – and particularly generative AI – many small businesses assume the technology is not for them. They worry that AI tools will be prohibitively expensive, require high-level technical know-how and expose them to risks they don’t understand.

That’s unfortunate – not only as many businesses will miss out on the benefits that AI offers, but also because many tools aren’t complicated or expensive. Indeed, there’s a good chance you’re already using AI to good effect without even realising it – many of the improvements made to the software that even small companies routinely use to manage their businesses are underpinned by AI technology of one type or another. In practice, the only way you’re going to become more comfortable with AI is by actually using it. Here are nine simple-use cases for AI.

1. Automate your accounting

There’s a good chance you’re already using software from a provider such as QuickBooks and Xero to stay on top of your bookkeeping. Most providers in this market now offer a range of AI tools that can save you huge amounts of time and often save you money. They automate tedious manual tasks such as generating invoices, tracking expenses and managing payroll. They’ll work out how to reconcile your accounts and generate the financial reports you used to compile yourself. They can even spot anomalies and flag up potential mistakes.

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2. Publish more content

Content marketing – everything from social media posts to thought leadership – has become a critical element of many firms’ marketing strategies, but generating good-quality material can be hard work. However, there are a growing number of tools that leverage generative AI services such as ChatGPT to produce this content automatically. That doesn’t mean you can publish it at once – it’s crucial to edit the material. But having first drafts generated automatically is a huge shortcut.

3. Hire a virtual assistant

Virtual assistants such as Siri and Google Assistant are driven by AI and can help you reduce the administrative burden of running a small business. You can use them to schedule meetings, set reminders and track email responses. And with the leading technology firms, due to unveil major enhancements to their voice services soon, it will soon be much easier to deal with these assistants.

4. Optimise your email marketing

If you’re still sending out thousands or millions of emails with the goal of generating new business leads, it’s time to be more strategic about your efforts. AI-driven solutions such as Mailchimp and Brevo can help you get much better results from these campaigns. They work out when to send messages for the best effect and which subject lines get the most engaged responses. They can even customise the content of each email to the target.

5. Make more accurate sales forecasts

If you’re planning for 2025, your sales forecasts are critical. They’ll determine everything from how much inventory you need to whether or not you should take on new staff. AI-powered customer relationship management (CRM) software can help make these forecasts much more accurate. Tools from providers such as Salesforce and Zoho work through your historical data and access third-party information on factors such as seasonality and market conditions to gauge where your sales are likely to be headed.

6. Take on the fraudsters

AI is your best weapon as you fight against fraud. A growing number of providers – including banks and credit card providers – offer simple tools that will scan your firm’s transactions in search of red flags. They’ll spot potential frauds you don’t have time to look for.

7. Make more out of your meetings

Small business owners and managers spend hours in meetings each week, many of them via virtual calls on Teams or Zoom. Keeping track of who said what – and what you promised to do – can be difficult, but transcription services such as Otter and Wingman take the pain out of this process. They’ll provide you with a transcript of the call, but also summarise key points and the action steps everyone agreed on.

8. Work out what your customers think of you

Studying what customers think and say about your business enables you to be much more responsive – to build closer relationships with your market and to ensure your products and services enhance your brand rather than damaging it. AI tools are good at sentiment analysis. They use natural language processing tools to assess feedback and comments about your business on social media and review sites.

9. Play with chatbots

Managing large numbers of customer inquiries is hard work – it requires significant resources, and your brand is easily tarnished when things go wrong. AI-driven chatbots leveraging tools such as ChatGPT can help resolve that problem. Tread carefully here – customers are too important to experiment on blindly – but these tools can deal with simple queries, freeing up your staff’s time to deal with more complex cases.

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