AI isn’t a thing of the future or reserved for large corporations with mega budgets—as we speak, it’s helping small businesses who use it save time, improve accuracy, strengthen communication, and serve their customers better.
If you’re unfamiliar with how AI can actually be used in your day-to-day processes, this article will help you learn the answer to these two questions:
- What can AI do for my business?
- How do I implement it without making things complicated for myself and my team?
Contact Atlantic Data Systems to get personalized help implementing AI at your small business.
5 Things AI Can Do for Your Business (Faster or Easier Than Doing It Yourself)
While most business owners can clearly see time savings when it comes to summarizing documents or generating marketing materials, AI has less obvious benefits, including allowing teams to communicate more clearly and make better decisions. Here are several ways we’ve seen small businesses successfully using AI. Take a look, and perhaps you might consider adopting one or all of these ideas!
1. Fast, accurate data analysis.
Small businesses collect large amounts of information, including client details, sales reports, meeting notes, and more, but managers and employees don’t always have the time to process it, so it is pushed to the bottom of the to-do list, oftentimes until it’s useful life is outlived. Using AI, teams can scan and summarize data from PDFs, spreadsheets, and emails in seconds. Instead of taking time to manually sort through files, AI tools give you clear insights and action items instantly.
2. (Nearly) effortless marketing content creation.
From social posts and ad copy to newsletters and product descriptions, AI helps small businesses generate drafts quickly and can be a time saver in polishing those drafts into final products. This saves hours each week and ensures consistent, on-brand messaging without needing a full marketing team. The catch here: Like all AI, you have to train it to be what you want. And you should always review what AI has provided so you make sure it matches your brand tone.
3. Precise meeting summaries and communication.
In speaking with leaders at other small businesses, this is one benefit of AI they see right away. AI tools can take notes during meetings, identify key points, list action items, and distribute summaries nearly automatically, within minutes (sometimes even seconds) of your meeting closing. That means fewer missed tasks, less back-and-forth clarification, and better alignment across projects. Bonus: These AI meeting tools are super accurate—you don’t have to wonder if the AI pulled the correct information from what was said.
4. Streamlined processes.
If you’re handing off information to your employees or contractors, following up with clients, or planning project phases, AI can help you reduce manual steps and miscommunication. By automating repetitive tasks, your team can work faster and with fewer errors.
How To Implement AI At Your Small Business
My best advice: You don’t need to overhaul your entire workflow to get value from AI. Start with tools that integrate easily into what you’re already doing, and add more over time. There’s no better time than now to begin to integrate tools that will save you time, help you improve in weaker areas of your business, and make you more efficient.
Here are my top four suggestions for implementing AI within your business:
1. Use AI to synthesize virtual meetings. If you’re using Microsoft Teams, upgrading to Teams Premium (around $10/month) is an easy first step. It automatically generates meeting transcripts, summaries, and follow-up notes. After each meeting, you can immediately send the summary to your team or clients to keep everyone aligned, with no extra work needed by you.
2. Use Microsoft Copilot for broader AI support. A Microsoft Copilot license goes further than Teams Premium. In addition to meeting summaries, it can analyze Excel files, summarize emails, extract info from PDFs, and even help draft documents or reports. If your business deals with frequent data or email-heavy workflows, Copilot can free up significant time.
3. Build internal AI chatbots. This is one of my favorite uses! With recent AI updates, even small businesses can create simple internal chatbots to answer questions, search for or within documents, and assist customers with basic questions. These bots can connect to large language models while staying within restrictions you define. For example, if you work with government data, you can configure the bot to only pull information from government-approved websites.
4. Use AI for security and data protection. Cybersecurity is (or it should be!) a major concern for business owners exploring AI, but sometimes it’s difficult to get your head around if it’s not the world you live in. For business owners who want AI without losing control, Microsoft offers one of the safest and simplest approaches. However, using AI through Microsoft’s ecosystem makes this significantly easier. When you use Microsoft tools:
- You retain ownership of your data
- You control how information is stored and shared
- You can apply restrictions consistently across your organization
- You still get access to advanced AI models like ChatGPT in a secure environment
The Bottom Line: Use AI where it works for your business (and begin today!)
AI isn’t a thing of the future; as we speak, it’s helping more and more businesses (yes, even small businesses!) work smarter. From automating meeting notes to generating marketing content and analyzing data, AI tools give teams more time to focus on what matters: serving their customers and growing their businesses. AI is an advantage you can use today.
However, we know it can be a lot, and it’s nice to have a human alongside you to help you identify how to use it in your business. As always, you can email us for help in everything from learning the capabilities of your current Microsoft tools to making sure the AI you’re implementing is safe for your business’ cybersecurity. We’re always happy to help!
