For SMBs with smaller teams, the best option is to have a unified, AI-powered platform that creates a comprehensive view of their business, which can help with forecasting.
“This gives SMBs a holistic picture of their business without moving from one siloed app to another,” Cliff says. This improves their ability for reliable scenario planning, all-around actionable performance assessments and predictive insights.
“Financial forecasting isn't just about sales, it's about the entire customer lifecycle. So that deeply unified platform leads performance metrics, such as customer lifetime value and retention, directly to financial outcomes, moving you beyond simple top-line revenue reports,” he adds.
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Cliff shares an anecdote of one company that provides fitness and wellness services through a platform that previously had an unwieldy, fragmented approach to forecasting reports. Once the company standardized on a unified solution, reports could be pulled in minutes and widely accessible.
“For financial forecasting, this instantly gave the team access to centralized data that they put in one place — across customer registrations, orders, all their engagement rates — so that they could generate accurate, up-to-the-minute revenue projections and operating metrics rather than rely on outdated or manual data,” he says.
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Having clear, professional reporting helped the startup attract investors since they could demonstrate operational maturity and a reliable foundation for scaling, he adds.
An integrated platform can also then maximize productivity and connect parts of the business that were previously siloed. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, for example, allows SMBs to manage finance, operations and more in a unified solution enhanced with AI features.
As SMBs think about moving beyond forecasting and predictive analytics, they have an incredible opportunity to take advantage of agentic AI, Cliff adds, especially since CEOs believe digital labor will have a greater impact on business than the internet and cloud computing combined, according to Salesforce research.
“We think of large enterprises when we think about AI adoption disruption, but agents really level the playing field for SMBs, helping them do more with less,” Cliff says, adding that it’s crucial to keep data centralized and updated to make this change a more valuable reality.
