Eighty-eight per cent of Australian small and medium businesses (SMBs) with artificial intelligence (AI) say it boosts their revenue, according to a new Salesforce survey.
Now in its sixth year, the Small & Medium Business Trends report draws on insights from 3,350 leaders from small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across 26 countries, including 150 from Australia. The latest report highlights how forward-looking businesses are using AI to drive growth amid the meteoric rise of autonomous AI agents.
Today, 85 per cent of Australian SMBs – compared to 75 per cent globally – are at least experimenting with AI, citing benefits to revenue, productivity and customer experience. This gap appears set to widen — 78 per cent of growing SMBs globally plan to increase their AI investment next year, versus 55 per cent of their declining peers.
In Australia, the technology is transforming both customer-facing and operational functions, with business leaders reporting their top use cases for AI to be generating new content, automated service chatbots, and automated recommendations for customers.
Why it matters: This new research follows an August 2024 study published by Slack that found SMBs can lose valuable time to technology inefficiencies, uncovering a need for AI solutions that boost productivity. In Australia, flexible accommodation provider Urban Rest is showing how the implementation of trusted AI is leading to increased revenue and productivity across the business. With Salesforce, Urban Rest has transformed its guest relations team, providing 24/7 support and ensuring its team can apply a 360-degree view of guests and properties to every customer experience. Along the way, it’s increased revenue by 1400% in under three years, and reduced the number of field service visits by up to 40%.
Aussie SMBs Grappling With Growing Tech Complexity
As technology offerings multiply and capabilities expand, SMB leaders continue to face mounting pressure to effectively manage their tech stack.
- 73% say keeping pace with changing technology is challenging
- 45% say there isn’t time to master all the tech their company uses
- 47% worry their company will be left behind when it comes to AI
- 79% are also more data-conscious than the global average (74%), saying that improving the quality of their data would increase revenue
SMB leaders who haven’t adopted AI may also have a blind spot about its prevalence. Globally, while 80 per cent of those using AI believe the technology is commonly used among their peers, only a third of non-users agree.
Trust Is Paramount in the AI Age
Security ranks as the top technology challenge for SMBs globally, reflecting the growing stakes of managing sensitive business data as SMBs expand their AI capabilities.
For Australian SMB leaders, poor integration with existing technology and lack of strategy or use cases are also top of mind as they manage their technology approach. This shapes their purchase decisions: 79 per cent of SMB leaders in Australia say they would spend more on technology from trusted vendors.
The Salesforce perspective: “It isn’t surprising to see that Australian SMBs are already ahead of the curve for using AI. The results demonstrate the value of that first-mover advantage; leaders who have seized on this AI urgency are scaling faster, with improved operating margins,” said Adrian Towsey, Area Vice President, ESMB, Salesforce ANZ. “By using AI and autonomous agents to create personalised content, and provide improved service and recommendations for customers, SMBs can improve the customer experience and build trust.”
Australian Customer Perspective: “Implementing our sales, service, marketing, and operations into one integrated platform where they can work together with trusted AI and data has had a significant impact on our business. We’ve increased productivity and revenue even as we’ve dramatically increased the number of properties we look after in the last three years. And with the more general availability of autonomous agents, we’ve never been in a better position to deliver on our vision and promise to our customers. ” Jeff Baars, Chief Commercial Officer, Urban Rest.
More information:
- Read the full Small & Medium Business Trends report
- Discover how small and growing businesses can get started on Salesforce Starter.
- Explore the Stat Library, Salesforce’s bookmarkable database of stats for journalists
Methodology
Data in this report is from a double-anonymous survey conducted August 3 through September 16, 2024. The survey generated 3,350 responses from leaders of small, medium, and growth businesses (200 employees and under) across North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe, with 150 businesses in Australia. For more demographic information, please refer to the full “Small & Medium Business Trends” report.
