Columnist

Is your business making the most of artificial intelligence?

Nobody starts a business because they dream of spending Friday afternoon updating reports, chasing paperwork or entering the same information into three different systems.

Yet somewhere along the way, that’s what running a business has become for far too many people.

I was therefore interested to see the Government announce plans to simplify corporate reporting and reduce some of the administrative burden on British businesses.

Reforms already introduced are expected to save businesses more than £450 million a year, with further proposals looking at simpler reporting, digital communication and how artificial intelligence could help drive efficiencies.

Good, because I’m yet to meet a business owner who says they need more paperwork.

Government red tape, though, is only part of the problem. Businesses create plenty of their own.

Reports are produced because somebody asked for one five years ago.

Meetings stay in the diary long after anyone remembers why they started.

Information is copied from one system into another.

Emails are sent asking for information that already exists somewhere else.

Then along comes artificial intelligence and we’re tempted to automate all of it.

I’m not convinced that’s always the answer.

Before asking, ‘can artificial intelligence do this?’, perhaps the better question is, ‘why are we doing this at all?’

That’s an important distinction.

Can artificial intelligence reduce business administration? Absolutely.

It can help draft routine reports, summarise information, organise documents, respond to common enquiries and remove some of the repetitive work that consumes people’s time.

But should every repetitive task be automated? No.

Sometimes, the best efficiency saving is deleting the task altogether. And that particularly matters for SMEs.

Time spent administering the business is time that isn’t being spent with customers, developing people, improving services or finding the next opportunity.

And this is where I think the artificial intelligence conversation needs to mature.

Using it well isn’t about finding the cleverest tool or automating the greatest number of tasks.

It’s about understanding how work actually moves through your business and being prepared to question whether it still makes sense.

So, where should a business start with artificial intelligence?

Not with a subscription. Start with a process.

Find something necessary that repeatedly consumes time.

Understand why it’s being done, who needs the outcome and what would happen if you stopped doing it.

If the answer is, ‘we’ve always done it that way’, you’ve probably found somewhere worth investigating.

If the work genuinely needs doing, then ask whether artificial intelligence could make it quicker, simpler or less frustrating.

Technology can make a good process faster.

Unfortunately, it can make a pointless one faster too.

If we’re serious about using artificial intelligence to improve productivity, perhaps our first job isn’t automating more work.

It’s deciding which work is worth doing in the first place.

Kaye Nicholson is founder of artificial intelligence support provider GrowthZone AI

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