AI is a money tree. Jim Simpson, chief executive of Ziptech, a London-based IT services company, used it to draw his own money tree (above) in the blink of an eye.
While large enterprises are promising to transform the world using AI—Apple’s stock price jumped by 24 per cent after simply announcing an AI strategy—many small business owners are unsure what it means for them. They cannot afford to be complacent.
Speaking at a UK Business Advisers seminar, Simpson warned that AI will change business forever. The message is to get engaged today.
The three steps to AI adoption
The typical journey is for personal adoption to lead to company adoption to lead to business transformation, says Simpson.
As an individual, you start using AI tools to be better at your day job, to be better at communications, to move faster and to be a better leader.
Then you help introduce change into your business, enhancing productivity, improving the consistency of the organisation and deskilling delivery of products and services.
The final stage is where you integrate AI into your actual operations, using chatbots for customer service and Chat-GPT for creating and delivering marketing plans.
All businesses need to be on this journey now.
The trick of deskilling
Deskilling is an important word. It sounds like something trade unions will be against. It sounds like you are moving from a world of fitters to assemblers to a production line of robots.
The fear is that deskilling is a process of continuous lowering of skill levels in a national economy, resulting in an unskilled proletariat. A form of social control where work is organised into simple, repetitive tasks with little mental reflection.
But the opportunity for business owners is to harness the creativity of their people’s resources in ways that add value. Fifty years ago people were employed by companies to compute and fill weekly pay envelopes that contained a mix of notes and coins that often varied depending on the hours worked.
In the future, we will look back on many repetitive tasks and wonder why we employed people to do them. That future is only five years away. Which is why you need a strategy for AI today.
On AI, the message is clear
The message is to start small, explore the tools available, and take that first step. The rewards of adopting AI are within reach, and the journey begins today. Are you ready to embrace this change and take your business to the next level?
UKBA and Ziptech are delighted to announce their collaboration to help SMEs harness the power of business transformation using technology and AI.
This new service will provide tailored guidance to help small businesses understand, adopt, and integrate AI into their operations with a clear focus on deliverables—boosting productivity, reducing costs, and driving growth. Stay tuned for more details on how this initiative can benefit your business and make AI work for you.