3 Best Practices for SME adopting Generative AI

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) has taken the world by storm, transforming multiple sectors like healthcare, automotive, finance, and retail just to name a few. While large corporations are swiftly integrating AI capability into their systems, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) also stand to benefit substantially from Gen AI adoption.

As an SME, you may be pondering the practicality of implementing AI. At WentiLabs, we created this guide to you understand how AI adoption could help SME can catapult your operation efficiency and productivity into the next level.

What Is Generative AI?

Gen AI or generative artificial intelligence refers to the use of AI to create new content, like text, images, music, audio, and videos. Simply put, Gen AI learns by analysing vast amounts of existing data. For example, if you want it to generate images of cats, you'd feed it thousands of cat pictures so it understands what cats generally look like. This makes Gen AI application incredibly versatile. As technology progresses, the capabilities of Generative AI will likely expand.

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Why SMEs Should Consider AI for Business

In an age of AI transformation, SME can significantly benefit from AI for business. SME can leverage the powers of generative AI models to optimise their operations and improve the productivity of the current employees. Hiring has typically been one of the major challenge for SME and it often leads to bottle neck for expansion. Rather than replacing staff, think of AI as a tool, equipping your existing workforce with enhanced capability.

Generative AI models are potent tools that can vastly improve business productivity. They enable SME to streamline business processes, reduce manual errors, and free up resources, allowing them to concentrate more on their core business operations.

As an example, consider the operations of customer service. An AI tool for small businesses can elevate the entire customer experience. Customer support team could leverage on the Generative AI to create personalised responses based on customer’s past interaction with the company. By automating routine tasks and creating intelligent customer interaction systems, businesses can deliver a higher level of customer satisfaction. The customer service agent would require less time looking for relevant information to reply to customers’ request. An AI tool for business would be able to pull information from various sources to help shorten the time required for customer support.

The AI Adoption Blueprint for SMBs

Transitioning to AI might seem daunting, but with a systematic approach, the benefits are within reach. Below are a few steps to help guide you through if AI is suitable for your business growth

Step 1 Identify and Define the Business Problem:

Every successful AI strategy begins with a well-defined problem. Before diving into AI, understand the 'why.' Is your customer service lagging? Is there room to automate mundane tasks? Identify these issues and these will serve as the foundation for your AI strategy.

Start by evaluating your business operations and pinpoint areas that could benefit from automation or intelligent analysis. This could range from customer service enhancements, to sophisticated data analysis for market prediction. Once identified, frame this need as your problem statement.

For instance, if your customer service department is overwhelmed with queries, your problem statement could be: "We need to improve our customer service response times and efficiency to enhance customer satisfaction."

Step 2 Assign an AI leader

A dedicated and strong leader plays a pivotal role to spearhead effort for AI tools adoption. This person should ideally have a deep understanding of the business problem and is able to coordinate across multiple teams to ensure the successful roll out. Contrary to popular belief, we think that this person do not need to have any experience with AI although it will be useful to have at least interacted with some form of Generative AI.

While initial pushback due to the lack of understanding of the tool is common, with the right  training and onboarding, the team will start reaping the benefits of enhanced productivity that leads to meeting business goals.

Step 3 Data preparation and integration

AI models need data to learn and generate insights. Select the right data set relevant for the use case and prepare it for ingestion by the AI model. Once the model is trained, take the model for a test drive. Validate the response and confirm that it is accurate. Allow end users to test out the system and provide their feedback so that adjustment can be made. Most importantly validate the outcomes against your problem statement to make sure that the intended outcome is achieved.

Conclusion

Once it’s roll out, make sure the data is always up-to-date and highlight any discrepancy from the base knowledge. While AI adoption might seem daunting, a structured and strategic approach can make the journey manageable and rewarding. By defining a clear problem statement, coordinating an effective team, and following a step-by-step implementation guide, SMBs can unlock the full potential of enterprise AI, driving business growth and operational efficiency.

Ready to embark on your AI adoption journey? At WentiLabs, we aim to provide SMBs with accessible and easy-to-use AI solutions. By joining our waitlist, you'll gain early access to our advanced AI tools.

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