Why Small Businesses Should Embrace AI

The business case for adopting artificial intelligence (AI) has become crystal clear, and many companies are already seeing results. According to recent Salesforce research among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the top three advantages of using AI include improved business insights, enhanced customer experiences and increased revenue. 

Those benefits all combine to power business growth. No wonder 95% of SMBs surveyed say they are now effectively using generative AI as part of their job.

Adopting AI is less challenging than you think, and developing DIY solutions isn’t necessary. If you want to join your peers but need some additional guidance, read on. We’ll walk through everything you need to know, including: 

• How AI benefits small businesses
• How to get started quickly: Try an AI pilot
• AI in Action: How companies are using AI

How AI benefits small businesses 

AI is a catalyst for growth and profitability because it unlocks greater productivity among every member of your team. They can use it to better understand your customers and deepen relationships with them. This makes the experiences you deliver more relevant and valuable than ever before. 

The most common outcomes include: 

Improved customer service: Employees can get mired in keeping up with questions, complaints and troubleshooting issues. AI can not only offer insights about what to do, but autonomously execute actions on your company’s behalf. This reduces average handle times while accelerating time to resolution, leading to both happier employees and customers. 

Improved productivity: Sales reps can waste hours crafting tailored messages to customers and prospects. AI can quickly produce targeted, relevant messaging to move deals along and increase close rates. 

Reduced costs: Marketing teams can see similar productivity gains by using AI to develop campaign materials and conduct more A/B tests. Assets like digital ads have traditionally been expensive to produce, but AI lets you create a large number of variations on a single theme so you can iterate increasingly better designs. 

Time savings: Employees can also get mired in highly repetitive tasks, like going over all the data they collect about customers, and ensuring it’s accurate and up to date. That’s a much better job to hand off to AI, which is designed to accomplish it quickly and in large volumes. Then there are the everyday chores that can keep the team working into the wee hours, like following up on customer inquiries, setting up appointments and organizing data for reporting purposes. AI can take care of these chores around the clock, while reducing costs in areas like content creation.

SMBs are uniquely positioned for AI adoption

If you assumed larger organizations are better suited to adopt AI, data shows the opposite is true. Salesforce research found enterprise IT teams are 5x more likely than those in SMBs to struggle with balancing speed, business value and implementing new technologies. 

SMBs have some inherent advantages that will streamline their path to AI adoption. Instead of navigating complex procurement processes and working through a series of approvals across the senior executive team, SMBs leaders can give AI pilot projects the green light relatively quickly. You just need to see a fit between the technology and the business goals you’re trying to achieve.

As AI for small business solutions are deployed, SMBs also have fewer people to train and educate about any changes to business processes. This means you can even run multiple AI pilot projects at once, learning and improving as you go.

Best of all, you don’t have to start from scratch and create your own AI solutions. You can seamlessly integrate data, applications, models and workflows without relying on engineers or other specialized talent. 

This is great news if you’re regularly competing against much larger organizations. AI levels the playing field by offering capabilities to enhance areas like sales, marketing and customer service for companies of any size. Given that small businesses make up 98% of firms in Canada, AI stands to have a huge impact on a segment that drives our national economy. 

How to get started quickly: Try an AI Pilot

The question remains: how do you get up and running, fast? Deploying AI across your entire company from the get-go can seem daunting. Successful businesses tend to take a “test and learn” approach instead.

An AI pilot project lets you start small by using the technology within a specific department or in a contained set of business processes. This reduces the risk of any negative outcomes and allows you to measure the results with the ability to make changes as necessary.

AI pilots are more than just experiments, though. In fact, they can be a way to get value out of technologies like AI quickly and make it easier to determine how a larger rollout should unfold. Start with the business problem or need (otherwise known as a “use case”) first, and then choose the right solution to address it.

AI pilots can be a true catalyst for positive change in your company – not only in how you solve problems but engaging your team so they buy into new ways of working that benefit your customer experience and the bottom line. 

AI in action: How Companies are using AI

Deciding to become an AI early adopter creates a positive momentum that sets the stage for long-term business success. Just look at these companies across Canada and beyond, which are already seeing the value AI offers: 

Bombardier breaks down data silos

Bombardier may not be an SMB, but it’s like many organizations in that it needs to focus on what it does best: building airplanes. 

When the company realized it needed to break out leads and other data out of siloed systems, developing a solution of its own would have tied up a lot of resources. Instead, Bombardier has used Agentforce, which offers a low-code approach to integrate AI into its sales process.

Some of the capabilities now available to Bombardier include predictive AI, which analyzes historical data (such as what customers have purchased in the past) to identify future trends.

How BACA Systems uses AI to orchestrate its sales strategy

BACA Systems, which supplies equipment to the natural stone industry, is using Einstein Activity Capture to summarize customer interactions like e-mail and phone calls to focus its follow-up activities.

Doing this kind of work would be a heavy lift for the average human, which makes it a good use of generative AI. Besides summarizing and organizing information, you can use generative AI to produce content and even write code. 

Why Crexi chose AI to save sales reps’ time

In the real estate sector, SMBs like Crexi are using the Einstein 1 platform to save sales reps time and increase customer lifetime value (CLV). AI can identify who they should be approaching with products and offers, so they’re always focused on the right priorities. 

The most advanced AI isn’t limited to surfacing insights or answering questions. With agentic AI, the technology can take direct action, performing tasks more like a trusted colleague than a simple chatbot. 

Whether you use predictive, generative or agentic AI, your goal should always be augmenting your human employees so you can create a limitless workforce. 

Tools to get you started on your AI Journey

If connecting the dots between your business needs and the right AI tools proves challenging, not to worry. Salesforce offers a number of free and easy-to-use tools to help.These include: 

• The AI Use Case library, which compiles ideas based on more than 100 industries about where AI can transform work and solve business pain points.
• Salesforce’s AI Maturity Assessment tool provides a clear view on how your company will need to navigate this journey, including how to ensure the ethical and responsible use of AI solutions. Use it to take stock of what AI adoption will mean for your organization’s people and processes. 
• Rather than cobble together multiple tools, Salesforce offers an all-in-one platform to get your AI pilot project off the ground. This includes solutions such as Agentforce and Einstein, as well as Salesforce tools that bring AI to Sales, Service and Marketing. 

Build your tech stack with an eye towards combining AI features and functionality that balance your needs for today and tomorrow.

Remember that you don’t need to do it all yourself. Pre-built solutions eliminate the need to ‘DIY your AI.’ Instead, the journey is more about turning on AI capabilities and integrating them directly into your everyday processes and workflows. This lets you get back to strategic planning and the more creative aspects of running an SMB.

Drive innovation with AI solutions

AI can transform businesses of any size, and there’s never been a better time for SMBs to get started. 

By starting with the right use case, identifying the appropriate AI tools and leaning on pre-built solutions, you can avoid the costly and lengthy DIY approach, and get to value faster. 

Embracing AI means your business will stand out from competitors by enhancing the experience for customers and employees alike.