Small Businesses Move Full Speed Ahead on AI

That doesn’t come as a surprise to Sanjeev Aggarwal, founder and partner at SMB Group, a technology research and analysis firm. Many small-business leaders have “been playing around with it at home, personally, and they see some of the things it can do for them in their personal life,” he says. “They are thinking, ‘If it can help me in my daily life, why can’t small businesses use AI at work?’”

Small businesses are in fact looking to AI to drive a range of improvements, from better cybersecurity and fraud detection to elevated customer service and business decision-making. Media interest may be helping drive their strong confidence that AI will be valuable across such a wide range of business outcomes.

“There’s a lot of hype around it. It’s everywhere: On the news, online, AI is making a big splash. And a lot of the hype is real,” says Tracy Hardin, author of How to Manage IT In Your Business and a member of the NAWBO Circle program, a peer group for women business owners. “That’s where a lot of the interest comes from.”

All of that adds up to a moment in which small businesses find themselves on the leading edge of tech adoption. “SMBs are more committed to AI than anyone else. They are using AI to work smarter and not harder,” says Natalia De Greiff, general manager for the U.S. central market at IBM.

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Small Businesses Are Strategic About AI

When generative AI burst onto the scene in late 2022, the pressure to “do something” with AI was intense. But acting rashly risks making mistakes: A documented strategy is essential for AI success, says De Greiff.

“People are asking, ‘Why are we chasing AI? How can we make sure that we are successful?’ To do that, they need to fully understand their business priorities and invest in technology in a way that aligns with their fundamental values and their business objectives,” she says.

An AI strategy provides that grounding. Recognizing this, CDW research finds that three-quarters of small businesses have an AI strategy in place or in development.

A strategy will help ensure that AI-driven applications don’t leak sensitive information. With many AI tools, “they take the information you share with them, and it’s accessible to other people,” Hardin says.

“I know somebody that got into AI and did a little research on a company she previously worked for, and she found all their HR information: All the employees’ names, addresses, phone numbers. It was right there. All she had to do was ask AI,” she says. A strategy will define the tools and processes that protect against this sort of thing.

Such a document is needed “to clarify business goals, priorities, workflows and governance practices,” De Greiff says. “Having that strategy will help SMBs determine how they are going to measure the impact and return on their investment.”

A formal strategy can also inform tool selection. “In some cases, you need independent AI tools. In other cases, there are tools that are built into some of the apps that they’re already using,” Aggarwal says. “A strategy helps them develop a prioritized way to approach this.”

That strategy can also help small businesses to focus their efforts. With so many potential uses for AI, “it is difficult for them to assess where to start. A strategy gives them direction,” he says. “It will help them prioritize the use cases.”

What Are the Best AI Use Cases for SMBs?

When it comes to those use cases, CDW survey data shows a number of areas already rising to the fore, with small businesses focusing on data analytics, security and end-user experience. Five specific AI-powered use cases, such as data analysis and fraud detection, are being deployed by half or more of small businesses as they strive to reduce employee workloads, improve security and make decisions.

Experts see big potential in these and other areas. AI is “awesome for marketing,” Hardin says. “You can have it write email campaigns or blog posts for your website. You can do graphic design and ads for magazines.”

AI can also drive new levels of collaboration in small businesses, “without much effort on their part,” Aggarwal says. For example, “everyone uses Zoom for videoconferencing, and it has a tool called AI Companion, which helps generate the call summary, it helps create action items, all of those types of things, in an automated way.” A tool such as this “can help save them time, which leads to more interaction with customers and partners, and that leads indirectly to revenue growth,” he says.

To bring these early use cases to life, “it’s important to define a quick win,” De Greiff says. At the outset, “you’re going to have people that are not willing to embrace it, but if they see results, you’re going to see more enthusiasm.”

At the same time, she says, “it is important to consider what the right tool is. If someone wants to jump into generative AI or agentic AI, but they don’t have an intelligent document-scanning platform that manages the LLMs in the right way, then they’re not going to get the output they were waiting for.”

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How Can Small Businesses Maximize AI Potential?

With 56% of respondents either piloting or fully deploying at least one AI function, small businesses have clearly embraced the technology. That’s because they believe AI is a game-changer for a whole range of critical objectives, from faster innovation to improved customer experience.

Going forward, they’ll need to focus on maximizing the ROI on those efforts. Too often, “SMBs talk about AI, but they don’t measure the outcome,” De Greiff says. They need to be looking at time saved, speed to results and other KPIs to measure success.

And they should act on those measures. “They should be prioritizing all of these results that they are reviewing, so they can retire what doesn’t work and double down on the things that are seeing results,” she says.

They’ll also want to be looking at the fast-growing field of agentic AI, in which AI agents are empowered not just to provide information but also to act within predefined workflows. “Building automated agents into applications that they’re already using will help them do things faster and in a more automated way in the future,” Aggarwal says.

“Understanding how to build and use those agents in the right way is important, and that’s where some of the technology providers can provide some value,” he says.