Toronto, Canada – June 19, 2024; Richard Socher, founder and CEO of You.com; on the left, and Devin Coldewey, … (+)
Surveys tout “high adoption rates” of AI in small businesses. But that’s just hype. Most of my clients don’t really use AI like their much larger counterparts. But that will change in 2025. Thanks to a wave of upcoming AI agents, small businesses will finally be able to start automating with AI like large companies do.
While enterprise brands like Klarna, T-Mobile, UBS Warburg and JP Morgan spend millions creating large language models that can do everything from responding to customer service requests, listening to customer interactions, making purchases This year, companies mostly tinkered with generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude or played with Microsoft Copilot and Google’s Gemini for Workspace to help them write better emails or answering basic questions.
Here are the AI agents
In 2024, the story of AI was one of big companies developing big AI applications. This is because small businesses cannot afford to build. But in 2025, things will change. Instead of creating their own apps, a wave of AI-driven software will become available to small businesses that will far exceed the capabilities of the chatbots we currently use. They are called AI agents.
An AI agent takes generative AI to the next level. This doesn’t just generate a response, an email, or a document. It actually does something. He performs tasks. He initiates transactions. This solves the problems. He behaves like a human.
Software companies large and small are investing in AI agents to improve their offerings. For what? Because they understand that these are the types of features that will help their customers increase productivity and profitability. More importantly, they compete with each other to offer the type of tools that will allow their customers to pay their monthly subscription fees. Good for them. And good for us.
Microsoft, for example, is deployment of ten agents for its Dynamics 365 clients. These “assistants” will better qualify prospects by conversing with prospects, confirm sales and purchase orders, reconcile invoices in one ledger with cash receipts in another, approve expenses , resolve issues, close tickets, and schedule field service agents. The company expects “many more agents” in the coming year.
CRM giant Salesforce presents SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) and Einstein Coach agents who will also qualify prospects before a human interacts, schedule meetings, and then deliver a video resembling a person resembling the prospect to help the salesperson rehearse their argument through role plays and ensuring competitiveness. analysis before actually conversing with their real human target. According to the company, “the SDR helps you win meetings, the coach helps you improve in your pitch”.
According to to intuitionwhich dominates the world of small business accounting software, its soon-to-be-released Agents will “bring together the power of GenOS, Orchestrator, large language models, GenSRF (Security, Risk and Fraud), UX experience and it It’s about tying all of that back to what people really want, which is the ability to get work done for them. Its financial officers will analyze a company’s cash flow and then pay bills accordingly. These same agents will digest and understand emails, documents and images to automatically process invoices and apply cash.
In the world of health, chip manufacturer Nvidia announced voice-activated AI agents who will take on the role of nurses at a much lower hourly rate. In the world of software development, companies like You.com have raised funds to offer their “research” and “engineering” agents who can retrieve reports, solve complex problems, and better understand complex scientific concepts.
For consumers and small businesses Anthropic And Google announced new agents that can literally take control of a device and then perform various tasks such as browsing the web, clicking a button, and entering text to do whatever an employee does ( i.e. “book a flight this day and time” or “order more desk). supplies” or “submit a complaint to customer service”) on a single order.
Moving from generative AI to AI agents
In 2025, small businesses will not only use AI to “generate” an answer to their queries. They will rely on AI agents to do something with this information.
The big concern, as always, is people. Although none of these companies will admit it publicly, their agents perform the tasks that humans do, which obviously means that fewer humans will be needed. Employees are very worried that AI will replace them and that they will lose their jobs. This is a legitimate fear.
For a business owner who is already facing a labor shortage and struggling to increase their business’s production and meet customer demands without increasing their overhead costs, agents will come in handy. In an economy facing population decline and barriers to immigration, they are a godsend. And until these agents are combined with technologies like Google’s Project Astra and robotics created by companies like Boston Dynamics and Agility Robotics, warehouse workers will remain in high demand. But it won’t take too long – probably a few years.
Should employees be worried? Only those who don’t accept this kind of thing to give themselves more value. AI is like any other technology. It’s a productivity tool. But business owners have a responsibility to allay that fear by providing training and helping employees understand the benefits.
The reality is that agents will finally start moving AI from corporate boardrooms to the high street this year. It won’t happen immediately. They won’t work as well as promised (when will there be new technology?). But rest assured, like the cloud, mobile apps and other technologies, our software providers will push their customers to use their agents and that’s exactly what my smartest customers will do.
What should small business owners do right now? It’s simple: talk about AI agents to their software suppliers. While large companies are creating their own internal AI-powered applications, the tech industry is investing hundreds of millions to create similar features for their customers. It’s up to us to understand these capabilities, learn them and apply them to our jobs in 2025.