How Generative AI Technologies Can Support Small Business Growth

The recent advancement of generative AI technologies has already provided widespread benefits for virtually all industries across the globe. With this new generation of generative AI tools, students, professionals, and business owners alike have been able to streamline a range of processes, from writing emails to writing essays, preparing presentation materials, and even conducting research.

But the limitations of generative AI and large language models (LLMs) don’t just stop at text generation. As generative AI technologies become increasingly sophisticated, they showcase a deeper potential for facilitating more advanced business processes like data analytics. This has led to business leaders seeing generative AI more as a kind of ‘generative business intelligence’ – a tool which helps organisations identify unique patterns in their own data sets.

Here are just some of the most compelling use cases of generative AI technologies that we’ve seen over the past few years, and the benefits that they may hold for your own small business.

Supporting advanced data analytics capabilities

Let’s start with arguably the most potent use case: AI-driven data analytics and data presentation capabilities. Currently, there are business software offerings that allow business owners to develop their own bespoke LLM for their organisation. This LLM is trained on their company’s own data, allowing business owners to create a generative AI tool that’s uniquely tailored to analyse their business performance. 

This technology has provided an elegant solution to one of the largest concerns facing data-driven businesses today: how do you sift through all your company’s growing performance data? With a generative AI-driven data analytics platform, however, the entire process of data analysis can be automated – from sorting through data to interpreting and even graphing data findings. 

This automated approach to data analysis allows business owners to spend less time poring through graphs and figures to look for correlations independently, and more time focusing on big picture strategies, powered by optimised data interpretation processes.

Boosting efficiency and productivity

On top of cutting down on time spent evaluating company performance data, generative AI tools can boost operational efficiency in a myriad of other ways. For starters, integrating IoT (or ‘internet of things’) devices with AI platforms allows business owners to gain unique insights into the performance of their company’s connected technologies. In the context of factory lines, AI-powered equipment and machinery can record its own performance data and even identify any areas for optimisation, be it in the form of reducing resource consumption, reordering materials to cut back on production waste, or even identifying operational faults in machinery proactively in order to avoid machine breakdowns.

All of these machine optimisation opportunities are made possible by two AI capabilities: the AIoT and predictive maintenance. The AIoT is largely self-explanatory (AI+ IoT), so let’s focus instead on the power of predictive maintenance. 

As its name suggests, predictive maintenance is a term used to describe the application of predictive analytics processes to the action of running diagnostics and troubleshooting tests on machinery or equipment. AI-powered machines have the processing capabilities (be it internally or via connected tech) to conduct their own routine and even emergency maintenance, cutting down on the need for manual repairs conducted by human operators, but also reducing machine downtime. Less machine downtime means more productive hours, which in turn means a greater production output for your business.

Reducing reliance on human resources

What’s the secret to business growth? Most successful entrepreneurs will say ‘having the time to adequately prepare your next move’. With business landscapes subject to rapid evolutions in the digital age, staying ahead of the curve is now vital to enjoying success as a business owner. 

The issue is that most small business owners spend so much time overseeing their teams and determining the best approach to delegation that they don’t really have the time to ‘think big picture’. But what if you had automated workflows set up daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly that help streamline the minutiae of your day-to-day operations?

With automated workflows, business owners can rely on their AI business management solutions to perform a range of different tasks, from paying and collating supplier invoices, preparing staff rosters, completing end-of-day bookkeeping tasks, and even organising your company’s tax documentation.

By automating these often mundane, administrative tasks, business owners and their teams can free up their own time and energy to instead focus on business growth strategising. In this regard, AI automation tools are an extension of the traditional outsourcing models and methodologies that growth-oriented business owners have been reliant on prior to the digital age.

For a real-world case study of how to grow your business while reducing your workload, check out the Real Life Real Equity podcast with special guest and our Chief Business Sherpa, Tristan Wright. Tristan’s insights into the benefits of outsourcing for your business and freeing up your internal human resources speak to the foundational value of business automation using AI.

Supporting business owners in reaching ESG goals

One of the more often understated or overlooked capabilities of generative AI is that AI-powered platforms can be used to not only identify optimisation opportunities for machinery or equipment, but also for environmental performance. Yes, optimising the environmental performance of your machinery and equipment (or even your plants/facilities as a whole) can provide financial benefits, in that your company operations utilise fewer resources. But there are more dynamic benefits to optimising the environmental performance of your small business.

How so? Because the digital age hasn’t just heralded in an evolution in business tech offerings. Consumer sentiments have also evolved in recent years, namely due to the undeniable correlation between industrial carbon emissions and the advancement of climate change. To try and offset the environmental impact of commerce and industry, more consumers are ‘voting with their dollars’ now than ever before. 

This is why more corporations are looking to their ‘green’ metrics to identify new unique value propositions for their products and services. If their products come in recycled packaging or a portion of their profits go towards supporting not-for-profit organisations, these ESG initiatives can provide consumers with additional incentive to do business with them rather than with their competitors. 

For small business owners who are looking to reduce their carbon footprint, investing in AI technologies can provide the environmental data sets required to set measurable ESG goals. In other words, these modern AI solutions can actually help you set and achieve measurable, data-driven goals, both with regards to your company’s productivity as well as your ESG performance.

Allowing for improved and informed growth strategising with generative AI

All in all, it’s evident that generative AI technologies allow businesses of all scopes to record and retain valuable performance data sets that can then be efficiently interpreted and then used to develop business growth strategies that are built on strong, data-driven foundations. 

So small business owners, start strategising your AI investments now to make sure you can get in on the ground floor of these rapidly evolving business tech offerings. The earlier you adopt the generative AI solutions available to you, the larger your historical data sets will be – and by extension, the more advanced your tailored AI tools will be.