How SMEs Can Use AI Without a Big Budget

Artificial intelligence isn't just for big tech companies. Small and medium businesses can capture real value today - often without hiring a data team.

Start with the problem, not the tech

The best AI projects solve a specific, painful problem:

Answering repetitive customer questions
Forecasting cash flow and demand
Categorizing expenses and flagging anomalies
Drafting content and summarizing documents

Low-cost starting points

Use existing AI tools for drafting, summarizing and support.
Automate data entry with OCR and simple pipelines.
Build dashboards so decisions are driven by data, not guesswork.

Where finance meets AI

With a background in both accounting and software, I find the highest-ROI wins are often in finance: anomaly detection in transactions, automated reconciliations, and forecasting. These are concrete, measurable, and pay for themselves quickly.

Start small, measure the impact, and expand from there.