With almost 60% of small businesses currently using Generative AI and 96% plan to adopt emerging technologies, artificial intelligence has become an essential entrepreneurial tool. Yet as more business owners experiment with AI, many are discovering that the hardest part isn’t learning the technology itself: rather, it’s sorting through the noise and navigating the many platforms to turn AI’s promise into practical results.
According to Bill Furlong, founder and CEO of SquareStack and author of “ASAP: AI in SMEs“, the challenge to successfully using AI lies “less in the code and more in connecting the dots.” Drawing on his extensive experience working and creating technology solutions for small businesses, Furlong shared four practical ways business owners can thoughtfully and strategically embrace AI.
Start simple
Start your AI journey by focusing on small, real-world tasks that help you save time or discover areas for improvement. Furlong advised starting with a single file and a single question: Upload a financial reporta sales presentation or internal form and have the AI analyze it. Here are some example scenarios and prompts you could apply to different parts of your business:
- Finance: “This is the last quarter P&L. What trends or risks should I monitor?
- Sales: “This is our sales presentation. Recommend improvements for clarity and conversion.
- HR/Operations: « Create a first year employee evaluation model adapted to our roles.
- Training: “Write a plan on how we will train the team to use AI in our workflow.”
These questions can give you a starting point to leverage the information you gain from these initial prompts and identify additional use cases for AI.
“Download it, put it down, learn from it,” Furlong said. “Momentum matters more than mastery.”
(Learn more: Leveraging AI to Test and Improve Business Ideas)
Make sure your technology tools communicate with each other
Small businesses often rely on a patchwork of platforms for marketing, sales, accountingplanning and operations. But without a way to integrate these different systems, it is more difficult to obtain comprehensive and meaningful insights from AI. Actually, Salesforce Search found that more than 80% of IT leaders cite “data silos” as a barrier to their digital transformation.
Small businesses that treat AI as an iterative process, not a one-time experiment, tend to achieve the best results.
Platforms like SquareStack act as a “translator” across a small business’s technology stack, using an agentic framework that connects and is trained on the company’s own software. This allows business owners to ask cross-functional questions and get answers from all internal data sources rather than fragmented manual entries.
A printing company Furlong works with created an agent that automatically compiles weekly ad performance from Instagram and Facebook and shares a summary with the team, saving hours of manual reporting. A real estate company created a similar agent to generate weekly reports from its scheduling software and agent workloads, allowing it to balance showings and reduce bottlenecks.
“The magic is not in a single tool, but in the way they talk to each other,” Furlong said.
Be intentional about what data you enter (and where you provide it)
In “ASAP AI,” Furlong reminds small businesses that AI is only as good as the data you give it. It is therefore important to audit your inputs, define naming conventions, clarify decision rules, and keep your documentation up to date when integrating AI into a workflow. By carefully controlling the flow of information into your AI tools, you and your team can use this technology safely, confidently, and with much greater accuracy.
This recommended approach involves what Furlong calls “internal AI”: AI platforms that function as a private personal assistant for your files, workflows, and use cases, with guardrails that you create. External AI, on the other hand, consists of public platforms that collect your data and analyze you in “invisible, often manipulative, often unregulated” ways.
“If you can’t know what the AI platform is doing with your input, it’s probably not acting in your best interest,” Furlong writes in his book.
(Learn more: AI for Small Business: How to Stay Competitive)
Continue to evolve and grow your AI results
Small businesses that treat AI as an iterative process, not a one-time experiment, tend to achieve the best results. Citing data from American Chamber of CommerceFurlong noted that small businesses that engage in modest, sustained AI adoption see improvements in sales, profits and hiring.
Furlong advised starting with a few concrete use cases, then evolving those workflows as you learn from the results. The goal is to let each AI interaction surface the next opportunity for improvement.
“You’re never done with one prompt,” he told CO—. “It’s amazing how much the answers will reveal to you about the next question.”
CO— aims to inspire you from leading, respected experts. However, before making any business decisions, you should consult a professional who can advise you based on your individual situation.
CO—is committed to helping you start, manage and grow your small business. Learn more about the benefits of small business membership in the United States Chamber of Commerce, here.
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