Small and medium-sized businesses want to integrate artificial intelligence into their operations, but a gap in internal skills holds them back. Only 52% of SMBs are training their workers in AI, and only 37% of SMB employees feel confident in their abilities to use the tools, according to a business.com survey of employers with under 250 employees. In a conversation with BizTech: Small Business, Ben Schreiner, the head of AI and modern data strategy business development for Amazon Web Services, explored how small businesses can overcome an AI readiness gap and achieve business value.
BIZTECH: What’s causing the AI readiness gap for SMBs?
In my travels around the country and from talking with many leaders of small and medium-sized businesses, I’ve learned most don’t have large technical teams, and they don’t necessarily have staff with deep expertise. That’s probably the most common reason — just the lack of overall technical depth at a traditional small to midsized company.
The other concept is that this technology is evolving so rapidly that it’s very difficult, even if you do have the deep technical expertise, to stay on top of the evolving AI landscape. The combination of fast-moving technology and a mostly technical staff is trying to keep the lights on while putting out fires. Most SMB leaders don’t have the time to even learn new technologies. They’re working seven days a week, 24 hours a day trying to grow their businesses, and finding the time to learn something new can be quite a challenge. I think those aspects are what led to a gap being created, or the potential for a gap.
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BIZTECH: Why do small businesses lack the internal skills and support to implement AI?
For most SMBs, technology isn’t their business. They’re providing a product. They’re providing service. They’re serving their community. They’ve found some way to add value to their customers in a new and different way. Because technology is not necessarily the focal point, I think that’s a big driver.
Most small businesses will start using AI as a part of the software they already use. Their accounting or marketing software is going to have AI infused into it, and that’s probably where most SMBs will get their exposure and start to get the benefits of AI. But they need to weave together all of the components to actually transform their business or customer experience, and that’s going to take a bit more doing.
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BIZTECH: What are some ways SMBs can build foundational AI capabilities within their teams?
It starts with learning what’s possible. What we can do today with technology, we fundamentally couldn’t do two years ago. And what we’re going to be able to do in two years hasn’t even been invented yet. It’s a very exciting time. The challenge for an SMB, because they’re so busy, is “How do I apply it?” And so, first and foremost is educating themselves, and we have several ways they can go about that.
We have a resource called Skill Builder for folks of all skill types, technical or not, where they can go and learn about AI and what it’s capable of. And then our partner network and our connected community are where they can go and learn from other business proprietors.
BIZTECH: What do SMBs need to do to compete differently in an AI era?
For most SMBs I talk to, it’s getting a good handle on their data. If you think about any small business, there’s a flow of information, whether it’s from customers to inventory and then to their products and services. A lot of this information flow is still manual. There are roadblocks along the way, and the more efficiently an SMB can have that information flow through their systems, enabling their people to better serve their customers, or enabling their customers to be better informed purchasers, that leads to a more efficient operation. Getting their arms around their data — call it having a modern data strategy.
I’ll often hear a small business owner complain their data is in silos or in pockets around their organization. It exists in those individual applications that they leverage. That’s very common, but that makes it very difficult for AI to see patterns across their entire organization so it can adjust how it addresses a market opportunity. The potential is understanding their data, putting it where it can be centralized and accessible, and then putting a layer of intelligence on top of it, allowing for that pattern recognition and the insights to bubble up to the leadership team, so that they can take those decisive moments and decision points to better serve the customers and grow the business.
BIZTECH: What are some real examples of how SMBs are closing the AI readiness gap and driving measurable impact?
Mobiletext is a company that monitors pipelines looking for degradation. They are using, powered by AWS, a capability to analyze video footage with computer vision to see the corrosion of joints along a pipeline to allow for predictive maintenance, so that the pipeline doesn’t have an environmental impact and doesn’t have to go down for any extended period of time due to an unanticipated disruption. And they’re managing 160,000 miles worth of pipeline. It’s a significant undertaking, all being powered by AI, allowing them to modernize their capabilities and improve the overall outcomes.
I’m a big believer in mental health, and a company called Kipu Health is using AI to help clinics focused on mental health services to operate more effectively and efficiently. It’s allowing them to document what they’re doing with their patients in an easier way, so they can spend more time with the patients and the people who need help and less time on the paperwork processes they are managing. Banyan Treatment Centers is one of their customers — a document-heavy small business with 17 facilities nationwide. They were able to reduce document processing time by 42%, time spent on biopsychosocial assessments by 67%, time spent on new client documentation by 60% and time spent on existing client documentation by 70%. All of this is being powered by AI and on top of AWS. That’s a great example of using technology to transform the operation of a small business so the end customer, the patient, gets more time and help. That is really what small businesses want to be doing in the first place: solving customer issues.
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BIZTECH: What does AI enablement mean to you, and what will true AI enablement look like for SMBs going forward?
What it means to me is helping a proprietor understand the technology, what it is capable of, and then helping them come up with prioritized projects or actions they can take that will have a direct benefit to growing or improving their business. To me, that is the ultimate outcome that we’re trying to drive and that we work backwards from. How do you help an SMB grow, and grow efficiently? When it comes to this technology, it’s learning what it’s capable of, determining and prioritizing where we should invest the time and energy, and then augmenting with our certified partners to help them go faster and realize those benefits. For me, that is the ultimate enablement.
AWS does have our Connected Community area, which is a purpose-built place with curated content for SMBs, where they can learn from others who have done this. In addition, they can get one-on-one time with an AWS technical support solution architect and ask their questions. They can find competency partners there. It’s free to join the connected community, but it’s meant to be a collaboration space for SMB operators.
I would encourage everyone out there to seize the moment, partner wisely and have a sense of urgency — because speed is a choice, and I think speed and the ability to adapt is going to be a key competitive advantage in the years to come. Those small businesses that seize the moment and become the disruptors of their industry, leveraging this technology truly in a transformational way, will set themselves up for continued success.
