AI as your small business superpower
Two months into my weekly Small Business Commissioner posts, can you believe I have not yet focused one on AI. Well, this is that post!
It’s amazing to see how much small businesses are embracing AI – all the surveys show it. This is due to a combination of small businesses being quick to adopt and adapt, alongside the fact AI is being built into products used on a daily basis in a small business like Canva, Mailchimp, cloud accounting tools etc.
To boost this yet further, a lofty ambition has been set by the
SME Digital Adoption Taskforce
(on which I sat as CEO of Enterprise Nation) which is to make UK SMEs the most digitally capable and artificial intelligence (AI) confident in the G7 by 2035.
The report in which the ambition is announced goes on to say achieving it is possible ‘with access to the right business support infrastructure, financial incentives, skills and leadership to encourage uptake and maximise the use of digital and AI tools.’
In response to the report, there is work underway across both the Department for Business & Trade (DBT) and the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (DSIT) to consider delivery of such support and incentives.
In my own area of work, I’m specifically looking at how AI can help small firms get paid faster and be served relevant support, so hope you will forgive that these are the two areas of application on which I focus.
Based on an illuminating call with Dr James Kuht, Founder & CEO of Pair (a company that pairs people with the AI that best suits their role, industry and priorities) I feel confident that we can get to productivity improvements with the right prompts to the current AI products on the market.
I set out my problem statements to James:
‘how do we get money moving faster through the economy and into the hands of small firms and how do we more effectively serve relevant business support to a business based on its specific requirements.’
On getting paid: James explained that ChatGPT has a new agent feature and it’s possible to send the agent into your accounting software, with a prompt to ‘take a look at my unpaid invoices and draft me email follow-ups in a firm but fair language asking my clients to pay’ – Chat GPT creates its own internet browser and interacts with accounting transaction data to pull a list of late invoices.
This is just one example of how AI could help. Of course, we are working at the Office of the Small Business Commissioner for all invoices to be settled on the due date but for when the work is needed, your AI agent could step in.
On accessing support: this can go someway to being achieved through scheduling a recurring task asking your preferred AI tool to every week do a comprehensive internet based search to look for relevant funding opportunities. Tell AI your company type, size and location and let the scheduled task kick in with results delivered to you each week/month with potential funding and support opportunities.
We are keen to take the thinking further. On 17th September we are co-organising a workshop hosted by the Centre for Finance Innovation & Technology (CFIT) that will look at small business data (particularly from banks and accounting software) and how invoice raise and due dates can be fed into an AI layer to prompt actions, such as releasing funds. I will update further on this post the session.
If we can truly harness AI to the point of every small business working at its optimum best, what growth we could achieve. Let’s go, BritAIn!