How small businesses can take advantage of the AI revolution

Administration and the easy wins

Increasingly, AI is proving useful at streamlining a wide range of administrative processing tasks. Businesses can use this functionality to help with:

• Analysis: AI can serve as a useful starting point when analysing patterns, spotting trends and anomalies in data sets, to supplement your own review and analysis. Accountants used to call much of this ‘analytical review’.
• Prioritisation: Using AI to prioritise to-do lists and emails can help cut through the noise, rather than sifting through huge volumes of information and prioritising manually. Be wary, though; you may disagree with what the AI thinks is urgent!
• Creating templates and drafting plans: You may have a large volume of information or notes that need to be organised and summarised in the form of a report, template or plan, and AI can provide a great starting point for you to build on, saving lots of manual input time. The old labour-intensive tasks of business analysis and sector summaries are being transformed in real time.  

The devil’s advocate

In a family business or a one-person company, being a decision-maker can be a lonely environment. Those you work closely with may be hesitant to ‘speak truth to power’  for fear of damaging long-standing relationships. Asking AI to critique your arguments, plans or ideas can add a useful second voice into the discussion. It doesn’t mean the criticism  is always  right, but AI  can highlight something you hadn’t thought of, such as:

• Fact-checking: AI may be able to find evidence that contradicts your assertions in a plan or piece of communication.
• Identifying gaps: Challenging AI with your thinking can help you identify where you’ve missed something important.
• Refining an idea: From anything as simple as an email or web page to a business plan you’ve produced, AI can suggest improvements.

Signposting 

AI is prone to ‘hallucinating’ and so is a notoriously untrustworthy source of facts in its own right. However, it can be very useful in identifying niche or hard-to-find sources for information, such as:

• Finding relevant evidence: AI can often be useful in finding your sources of information that discuss your particular enquiry instead of spending hours searching yourself. This can help you cross-check any information that you’ve been provided with against real and relevant sources. 
• Reputable sources: The internet is full of incorrect or irrelevant information that AI can pull from, so asking AI to only refer to specific types of sources or certain professional bodies when providing answers to your queries allows you to review citations and references that are more trustworthy.

The human factor

Much of law, regulation and business interaction relies on human interpretation and interpersonal relationships that can’t be replicated or processed by an AI. In a world where AI is increasingly used, the human factor will become an even bigger point of differentiation for a business. There are key areas where AI should be used minimally.

• Building connections with your customers and advisors: The most successful long-standing and trustworthy relationships are built on interpersonal connection.
• Communication: AI can help provide talking points, but it can’t communicate for you. Studies show AI has a recognisable pattern of speech and language that are becoming increasingly recognisable, and relying too much on AI delivery can result in a ‘homogeneous tone’; a loss of the personal touch in your relationship with customers and therefore a lack of trust if you are seen to be formulaic and inflexible or just plain lazy in your approach.
• Personal circumstances: Sometimes the most logical answer will not be the right one for you, your family or your business. You may have a history of personal experience, a certain risk tolerance, or certain deeply held principles that inform how you run your business, and current AI analysis cannot factor these instincts into its output.

Professional advice and output

Perhaps the biggest danger of AI is when it is used as a replacement instead of a tool. Whilst it may seem a low-cost temptation for limited-budget businesses trying to grow, caution should be exercised before relying solely on its output.

• Uninformed advice/imagined sources: AI can help signpost to useful sources of information, but it has been known to refer to evidence that does not exist (a process known as 'hallucination'), provide incomplete or incorrect analysis, and (currently) does not factor in the practical, tailored advice of an experienced professional such as a solicitor, accountant or business advisor.
• Shaky foundations: AI collates and uses all information shared on the internet, public databases and archives, including vast swathes of incorrect and outdated information. Whilst it can certainly be used as a tool to assist with specific tasks or trying to seek specific sources of information, relying on its output has a high risk of severe reputational damage, as has been highlighted in the press.
• Decision-making: Short- and long-term business decisions don’t just rely on data, analysis and facts. They also rely on trust, vision and context and a future vision that cannot be calculated by an algorithm.

In the early stages of a business, finding the right balance of responsible use of AI can make a big impact on your business, but there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

We work with businesses to ensure they get the high-quality, tailored advice from experienced professionals, whilst benefiting from the efficiencies and enhancements that AI can provide.

Please contact your usual Crowe UK contact if you’d like to discuss this in more detail.