In today's fast-paced business world, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have a secret weapon: artificial intelligence (AI).

But wait, before you start picturing robots taking over your office, let's explore how AI can be beneficial for SMEs…

Making your life easier with AI

1. Say goodbye to boring/routine tasks

Well, maybe you still need to empty the dishwasher. However, AI can help you if you ever find yourself drowning in a sea of emails or struggling to write a catchy product description.

With tools that are powered by natural language processing (NLP), you can effortlessly automate email responses, spruce up your product descriptions and tackle many other routine tasks. This allows you to focus on the intricacies of your business and remind yourself why you started it in the first place. The AI tools that can assist may be built into your office suite or maybe a simple front-end web application such as ChatGPT from OpenAI.

2. Streamlining operations

Similarly to the above point, you can use AI to help you with routine tasks but also streamline many operations.

As you’ll already know, running a business can involve juggling multiple things at once. Therefore, by analysing data and spotting patterns, you can use AI to help you make smarter decisions about inventory, supply chain management, and more. Plus, predictive analytics can help you stay one step ahead of the competition. So, ultimately, staying up-to-date and skilled with AI can help you work smarter, not harder.

It’s also worth noting that the training that learners receive during a Data and Technology apprenticeship will incorporate examples of how AI can help improve business processes, including building a helpdesk application to filter calls before they are sent to a call centre agent.

3. Coding made simple

If you're in the software game like I am, AI can be a game-changer for coding and debugging. It’s similar to having a coding buddy who can spot errors, suggest improvements, and even write code snippets for you. So, with AI-powered coding assistants, you’ll spend less time fixing bugs and more time building great stuff.

You can usually access these tools directly from your code editor, such as the AI Assistant in JetBrains PyCharm. For me, this is essentially the same as having a free employee who’s by my side whenever I need them.

4. Personal touch, automated

Personalisation can be a very difficult job without the help of AI. Artificial intelligence allows you to tailor marketing campaigns and product recommendations to each of your client’s or customer’s needs - all without breaking a sweat. This means that AI can make it much easier for you to show your customers some love and personalisation, which ultimately should lead to high retention and satisfaction rates. You can try this out by taking an old campaign and asking AI to update it.

Summarisation feature

With AI, you can say goodbye to long-winded PDFs, “TL;DR” responses, and time-consuming documents. When it comes to longer documents and texts, AI can now provide instant summaries.

You can use tools such as the latest free version of Adobe Acrobat, ChatGPT and others to summarise full texts - helping you stay informed while saving time. With tools like Adobe Acrobat, you can also ask questions about a document and specific notes that you should know.

Addressing your concerns

1. Don't fear the future

Many people are worried about AI stealing their job - but this isn’t something to be concerned about. While AI may automate some tasks, it can also create new opportunities for creativity and innovation. Think of it as a supercharged assistant rather than a job thief.

I grew up in the 1980s when there was a fear of the calculator - AI is expected to just be another tool that we’ll learn to embrace.

2. Budget-friendly solutions

If you’re concerned about the costs of implementing AI into your business, you’ll be happy to know that you don’t need a bottomless budget to get started. With affordable AI tools and cloud-based services, there is usually something available for all budgets. Plus, the long-term benefits can outweigh your initial investment.

Free AI tools are available such as ChatGPT, CoPilot in Bing, and Google’s Gemini.

Writing your own code to an AI Application Programming Interface (API) can make more advanced features available to you at a lower price than the standard web front-ends. I have built my own command line solution in Linux to query OpenAI at half the cost of the normal ChatGPT Plus subscription.

3. Upskill with ease

We offer a free generative AI course to apprentices in our Data and Technology programmes. This will help apprentices and the businesses that they/you work for better prepare for the future, as AI is already with us and embedded into many large organisations.

4. Text, images, voice-overs, videos all from AI

Aside from text generation, other modes sit with AI too. Images, videos, captioning and text-to-speech are available for you to use before (or better) than your competitors.

This image was created by OpenAI’s DALL-E and is used in training materials I write:

Embracing the future together

In conclusion, AI isn’t something to be feared - it’s something to be embraced. By leveraging AI to automate tasks, enhance decision-making, personalise customer experiences, and streamline operations, SMEs can unlock their full potential - all while saving time. So, embrace the AI future with open arms and watch your business and opportunities soar to new heights.

Upskill your business today

You don’t need to be afraid of AI as it can significantly help your business, especially if you stay up-to-date and skilled in AI and technological trends. If you’re looking to upskill your colleagues and team, your business could benefit from our Data and Technology apprenticeship programmes.