AI and Digital Transformation in smaller businesses

With AI dominating headlines, what should businesses—especially small to medium-sized ones—be doing right now?

(TLDR is at the end of this post...)

The AI landscape can be intimidating and surreal to anyone. While AI is not a new discovery, with concepts first arising back in the 1950s, it's the democratization of AI that is enabling a super-fast-paced creation of products and enhancements.

Strategy and AI

AI needs to be an integral part of your strategy and regularly reviewed. Concepts like chatbots to improve customer and employee access to the right information, content creation for better and more personalized marketing, and the reduction of low-value high-effort tasks to allow skilled staff to generate more valuable outcomes.

First things first

However, to make the most of the AI revolution, a robust foundation is needed, and that is through digital transformation and automation. The most successful application of AI capabilities will happen on the back of modern work practices and digital maturity.

What to focus on

Some key areas to focus on are: Automating processes; Integration and Connectivity; Adopting cloud offerings (many having their own AI offerings already); Making data available and useful; Securing data and the environment; Enhancing collaboration and communication; Having an accurate, wide-spanning view of your customers.

How to resource

Without expert resources in-house, smaller organizations can still manage. Consider upskilling existing staff as citizen developers, making use of no/low-code tools. Alternatively, engage with experienced outsiders to come up with high-benefit, low-effort ideas. Start small and achieve early wins.

Conclusion

AI has the power to transform your business in ways you may be unaware of. Traditionally, we would identify problems or opportunities and then figure out how to solve them. However, AI can be the tail that wags the dog, leading us to opportunities we didn't see or problems we thought were too hard to fix.

Businesses that have wisely invested in their technology landscape will reap the most benefits from AI, whatever that may look like in the future.

TLDR

TL;DR: Businesses, especially small to medium-sized ones, should embrace AI as an integral part of their strategy, focusing on areas like automation, data utilization, cloud adoption, and collaboration to harness its transformative power. With a robust foundation of digital transformation and the right approach, AI can lead to unforeseen opportunities and solve complex problems, ultimately benefiting businesses that invest wisely in their technology landscape.

This post was authored by me. And fine-tuned following feedback from ChatGPT. The TLDR was generated by ChatGPT.

#ai #digital #transformation #digitaltransformation #futureofwork #chatgpt