Often hampered by constraints like money, time and talent, SMBs face challenges when competing with enterprise businesses. So as the AI revolution takes the business world by storm—SMBs stand to gain the most from this transformative technology which often miraculously fills gaps. AI applications may improve operations, uncover competitive advantages and drive growth even for companies with smaller footprints.
For decades, there’s been speculation that computers would eventually replace jobs. While neuroscientists diverge on whether AI will be able to fully think and understand like humans, existing AI-powered tools can, indeed, automate repetitive, and often mundane tasks. With automated solutions for data entry and audits, inventory management and invoicing, SMB owners and their employees can spend more time on complex tasks that require human input. Both chatbot and scheduling software adoption has exploded, allowing businesses to outsource customer service requests and schedule optimization and management to computers. Generative AI chatbots are an evolution of their predecessors and may issue responses that appear as natural language. Not only have these shifts led to increased productivity–they are often cheaper.
AI products also exist to further improve the customer experience with personalized recommendations and suggestions–oftentimes based on dynamically generated segments. Customers are mapped to cohorts based on behaviors that may include browsing history, previous purchases, cart abandonments and social media interactions. As businesses get smarter about their consumers, marketing resources are better allocated, sales increase and customer satisfaction becomes intuitive.
The COVID-19 pandemic has only made the case for AI stronger, as more small businesses have recognized the importance of automation and data-driven decision making. Smaller businesses generally operate on tighter margins with lesser scale. R&D budgets are often limited, if not nonexistent and workforces are lean, limiting skill set diversification. With capital often flowing back into the business, there’s little wiggle room to invest in value add services with unproven ROI. While AI solutions are plentiful, SMBs will prioritize investing in technologies that are simple to adopt and show clear value in the short term.
SiriusMindShare contAInTM is a clear AI-as-a-service (AIaaS) winner for SMBs. Our solution is straightforward to use and quick to implement. We are agile and scale as you grow your business. contAInTM provides unmatched AI support–guiding customers along the journey from education, to onboarding to model creation and evolution. Our team commits to building in accordance with industry advances and customers can count on partnering with an AIaaS leader to take their businesses to the next level.
-- Timan Goshit