The arrival of autonomous agents as part of a third wave of AI will help empower Australian small and medium businesses (SMBs) to scale and grow with confidence, according to Gretta Svendsen, RVP Small Business for Salesforce ANZ.
Svendsen made the comments as part of the recent PayPal Connect event in Sydney, joining a panel of experts from TikTok and AWS to discuss the macro trends impacting small businesses in Australia in 2024.
Salesforce data earlier this year had highlighted how IT professionals in SMBs were already more confident about AI and its benefits, than their enterprise counterparts. Speaking at the event, Svendsen noted much of this confidence is down to the impact AI is having on small businesses every day.
“SMBs are now better able to leverage personalisation and that’s leading to growth. From making use of real-time data to tailor interactions based on customer behaviour, to sending customised and targeted email campaigns that can adapt at the moment of opening, these businesses are already implementing new ways of working and it’s having a positive impact.”
The panel also discussed issues of privacy and security, and the risks facing small businesses as they seek to implement AI. “Having the right platform to leverage AI from is essential,” noted Svendssen. “The largest challenge we see with SMBs is that they tend to use consumer AI platforms for business purposes.”
“Put simply, consumer AI isn’t fit for business purposes, it doesn’t have the appropriate safety and trust controls, and these were guardrails we built into our own platform from the start accordingly.”
Pointing to the AI implementation examples of local customers – such as Made Comfy and pay.com.au – Svendssen concluded: “Our advice to our customers has been to get the basics right when you start. It can be really easy to rush through things, think you’re going to come back and fix it later. Make sure you have good customer data and a good data platform to manage, capture and store this, supported by strong policies around keeping your data safe.”
