AI is everywhere, in every article and social media post, and writing many of them.* While there’s plenty of debate about the existential and environmental impacts, there is also certainty that the technology can help improve processes and save time. So it’s no surprise that many business owners, particularly small business owners, are curious about how AI can deliver improvements for their organizations.
It was this curiosity that drew the audience for the recent session “Confident, Not Cautious: Making AI Work for Your Business” at the Women of Western Wake Forum. Led by Manisha Khanna, an AI and Strategy leader at SAS, this session offered tips for getting business owners on the AI track, along with reassurance about where they are today. The audience represented diverse backgrounds: an event planner and fundraiser, a franchise owner, a commercial real estate marketer, and marketing staff at slightly larger but still “small” businesses. Among them, they faced a multitude of challenges in their AI implementation.
The Real Obstacles Aren’t Technical
Small business owners are always strapped for time. While that’s not unique in the business world, the range of tasks they are required to undertake is often exceptionally broad. One business owner called it “drinking out of a fire hose every day,” facing the onslaught of not just industry work, but the broader tasks of running a business. AI is an afterthought when you’re also doing payroll, marketing, and team communications. Though it can certainly help tackle those tasks, carving out the time to learn and apply AI solutions is daunting in the face of an already stacked to-do list.
Learning is also made much harder by the constantly changing landscape of AI. Every week there’s a new model or tool with a new nonsensical name. Much of the terminology is new, making it difficult to even begin to know how to look for answers. And the constant release of news makes many feel like they’re falling more behind every day.
Another gap for smaller businesses can be in the availability of information. Many times larger businesses have processes in place for collecting and sharing large amounts of data. This data is ideal for AI use cases that can provide real insights. Smaller businesses are often missing these data sets, due to a lack of time and existing processes, making it harder to get started or see meaningful results.
The Small Wins Already Happening
The good news is that many users have already seen results. Even a small amount of AI trial and error can lead to beneficial time savings. Among the audience there were reports of using AI for email drafting, marketing tasks, and budgeting.
While there’s no required training for successful AI implementation, a failure of imagination can make it hard to get started. One audience member, an event planner who admits she hates dealing with money, found her starting point in the one task she avoids: “It’s the thing I don’t want to do. So we put the thing that we don’t want to do on the back burner.” For her, that’s budgeting. Offloading the work you dread — and having it done quickly — may be the fastest route to an AI win, and can be the spark for more innovative ideas.
But users also shouldn’t get discouraged if they don’t hit a home run in their early AI workflow efforts. Indeed, your early attempts with AI should be smaller tasks that can help gauge how the tool works and where it best fits in your organization.
As Manisha said in her slides, “You are not behind. Your caution is a sign of good judgement.”
Hiring an AI Agent
While many individuals and small businesses have played with AI via the traditional “chatbot,” fewer users have played with agents. Agents are AI tools tasked with specific objectives, but left to complete those autonomously, taking multiple steps without human intervention. The potential benefits of AI agents are considerable, but it can be overwhelming to consider putting them into action as a small business.
Manisha encouraged the audience to think about agents as an extremely fast, enthusiastic intern. They have lots of initiative but little experience and questionable personal values. What would you let them do?
Always be sure to build in guardrails and rules for any AI you work with. And if you aren’t sure what those should look like, consider stepping back to write an overarching AI policy for your company. This document should set forth the standards for your employees and clients so they understand how and where AI will be used in the organization. Those standards can also go directly into your AI tool as a baseline for “behavior.”
Get Started
The benefits of AI may take time to see, but the more business owners (and individuals) use it, the more they will envision potential use cases. While we should be cautious with the technology, that should not stop us from taking advantage of it. Start small, but get started. Find a win, then use what you learned to reach for the next one.
“Your experience, your connections, and your values is not something which AI can replace, and that will be indispensable,” Manisha told the audience.
* This article was written by a human, but AI was used to help ideate on the structure, to identify good quotes in context, and to review the completed article. AI use in writing should be a sandwich: you can use it to help get you started and to polish your final product, but the “good” part of the sandwich should be created by the author.
