Automate This: What Your Small Business Should Outsource to AI

Small businesses are familiar with hiring woes, especially with unemployment rates hovering on the lower end at 4 percent. Sometimes good help really is hard to find! To help bridge the gap between hiring and training human staffers, small businesses are seeking help from artificial intelligence (AI). The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Councilreleased a survey that found a large percentage of businesses adopting AI for a range of reasons, with 19 percent saying they’ve used it for “augmenting skilled labor or lack of access to skill labor.” Some folks might see AI as a threat, but we’re here to show that when you approach it with the right strategy, mixing AI in with human employees might just be the perfect path forward. Today we’re breaking down a few of the key areas best suited for AI outsourcing—areas you can implement AI without throwing a cog in the wheel of operations.

Inventory Tracking and Management

AI is exceptional at driving efficiencies and profits through effective inventory management. It’s hard for small businesses that deal with physical products to track inventory, especially if they’re not staffed appropriately. But retail inventory systems can do the complex work of helping keep products in stock and lower costs. These systems are able to effectively forecast demand and create supply chain efficiencies, and they can also predict consumer demand and automate the reordering process, allowing businesses to maintain appropriate stock levels.

Invoicing and Payments

When it comes to invoices and other billing-related items, AI has proven its ability to shine. AI systems are now able to take relevant details from invoices (think of customer information, quantities, prices, etc.) and feed this to billing systems automatically. That means saying goodbye to manual entry and all the potential human errors that could result, plus it’s a huge time-saver for business owners. AI can also look at historical data, such as how and when your customers/vendors pay you, and use this to optimize billing cycles or even predict payment delays—in the long run this has the potential to improve your cash flow.

Routine Customer Service

AI is able to automate routine customer service tasks while still maintaining a human-like interaction. The more repetitive tasks, like helping a customer make a return, are best handled by AI tools that can then free up your agents for more complex matters. One of the most frequently encountered AI tools used today would be chatbots, which are online 24/7 and can tackle many customer interactions simultaneously. 

Email Content

Research from Ascend2 and RPE Origin recently revealed that 57 percent of enterprise marketers utilized AI for their email campaigns. It’s useful for personalization and retargeting, in addition to subject line testing and dynamic content creation. “AI can enhance everything that works already, such as predictive analytics, open rates, clicks. That predictive component really allows you to be more efficient in your email marketing,” according to Todd Lebo, CEO at Ascend2.

As technology shifts and advances, you can trust the team at ARF Financial to keep you updated on the latest developments. From automating common tasks to driving sales through AI chatbots, we’re only just scratching the surface of what AI can do for small businesses. Keep up with the trends on the Financial Pantry—your one-stop shop for all things SMB.

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