By Andre Arundell, Business Adviser, Berkshire Growth Hub
Artificial Intelligence is one of those subjects that can make business owners feel two completely different things at the same time.
Excited by the possibilities.
And slightly concerned that everyone else seems to be moving faster than they are.
When I speak to businesses, one of the most useful things I can say is this:
You do not need to become an AI expert to benefit from AI.
You also do not need to transform your whole business overnight.
For most small and medium-sized businesses, the sensible starting point is much more straightforward. Identify something that is taking too much time, costing too much money or creating unnecessary friction, and then ask whether AI could help you do it better.
That shift in thinking matters.
Rather than asking, “Which AI tool should I be using?”, start by asking:
“What business problem am I actually trying to solve?”
For SMEs across Berkshire, that could open up some very practical opportunities.
Why AI matters for Berkshire businesses
AI is moving rapidly from something businesses talk about to something businesses are actually using.
It can help generate content, analyse information, summarise documents, support customer communications, automate repetitive tasks and assist with decision-making.
The UK Government has also made improving digital adoption and AI confidence among SMEs a clear priority.
But I would encourage business owners not to get distracted by the technology itself.
The real question is whether AI can help your business become more productive, competitive or resilient.
If it saves you an hour a week, that has value.
If it helps a member of staff respond to customers faster, that has value.
If it gives you clearer insight into your sales pipeline or customer feedback, that has value.
And if it frees you up to spend more time developing relationships, improving your offer or winning new business, that may be where AI becomes genuinely powerful.
Start with your biggest time drains
A useful exercise for any business owner is to look at a normal working week and ask:
Where does the time go?
You may find that several hours disappear into activities such as:
• drafting routine emails;
• writing reports;
• creating social media posts;
• producing meeting notes;
• updating documents;
• summarising information;
• researching potential markets;
• responding to common customer enquiries;
• turning ideas into presentations;
• analysing spreadsheets or survey responses.
Many of these tasks still need human judgement.
But they do not always need to start from a blank page.
That is where AI can make a meaningful difference.
Seven practical ways SMEs can use AI
1. Create a stronger first draft
One of the simplest uses of generative AI is overcoming the blank page.
If you need to write an email, article, proposal, presentation, job description or marketing campaign, AI can help you create a structure or first draft.
The important part comes afterwards.
Review it.
Challenge it.
Correct it.
Add your own knowledge.
Make it sound like your business.
AI can help you get from nothing to something very quickly. Your expertise then turns that “something” into something useful.
2. Reduce repetitive administration
Business owners frequently tell me that administration gets in the way of the work they actually want to be doing.
AI can potentially help with tasks such as turning meeting notes into actions, summarising documents, reorganising information and drafting routine communications.
The individual saving might look small.
But think about a task that takes 30 minutes and happens four times every week.
That is two hours.
Multiply that across a year or across a team and the opportunity becomes much more significant.
3. Improve your marketing productivity
Marketing is an obvious area where businesses are experimenting with AI.
It can help you:
• brainstorm campaign ideas;
• draft social posts;
• generate blog outlines;
• rewrite content for different audiences;
• produce email subject lines;
• turn a long article into shorter posts;
• identify potential customer questions;
• develop content calendars.
But I would add one important warning.
Do not allow efficiency to remove your personality.
If every business uses AI to produce identical, generic content, the businesses that stand out will be the ones adding genuine experience, opinions and insight.
AI can accelerate your marketing.
It should not erase your voice.
4. Learn more from your customers
Customer feedback is incredibly valuable, but many businesses collect more information than they ever properly analyse.
Reviews, surveys, enquiries, support messages and sales notes can reveal patterns.
AI tools can help group comments into themes and identify recurring questions, complaints or opportunities.
For example, you might discover that customers repeatedly mention the same difficulty in your onboarding process.
That is no longer just feedback.
It is a business improvement opportunity.
5. Support research and decision-making
AI can also be useful as a thinking partner.
You could use it to explore:
• questions to consider before entering a new market;
• risks connected with a new product;
• different customer segments;
• potential competitors;
• ideas for improving a service;
• questions to ask during strategic planning.
However, this is an area where human judgement remains essential.
AI can produce incorrect information.
It can also produce an answer that sounds extremely convincing while being wrong.
So use AI to broaden your thinking, not outsource your judgement.
6. Capture knowledge inside the business
As businesses grow, knowledge often becomes fragmented.
One person knows how a particular process works.
Someone else knows how to handle a key customer.
Another person has the latest version of an important document saved somewhere on their laptop.
That creates risk.
AI tools can help businesses turn existing knowledge into clearer procedures, FAQs, training documents and internal guidance.
Done properly, that can support employee onboarding, consistency and business resilience.
7. Help your team become more productive
Perhaps the most interesting opportunity is not replacing people with AI.
It is giving capable people better tools.
Think about the member of staff who understands your customers but struggles to write.
Or someone who has excellent ideas but finds it difficult to structure a report.
Or a manager spending hours turning meeting notes into actions.
Used carefully, AI can help people overcome those barriers and concentrate on the work where their experience matters most.
Do not start with 20 AI tools
Whenever a new technology becomes popular, businesses can fall into the trap of collecting software.
One person signs up for one platform.
Someone else introduces another.
Subscriptions accumulate.
Processes become fragmented.
And nobody is entirely sure whether the business is getting a return.
I would suggest taking the opposite approach.
Choose one business problem.
For example:
Producing our weekly client report currently takes three hours.
Then test whether AI can reduce that time without reducing quality.
Measure the result.
Did it save time?
Was the output accurate?
Did it make life easier?
Did it introduce any new risks?
Would you trust the process with an important customer?
If the answer is yes, you have found a potential use case.
Then move on to the next one.
Keep people in the loop
AI should not mean abandoning human judgement.
In fact, as businesses use AI more widely, human oversight becomes even more important.
Anything involving significant financial, legal, employment or customer consequences needs careful review.
You also need to recognise something that is easy to forget:
AI does not know your business the way you do.
It does not understand every customer relationship.
It does not automatically understand your strategy.
It does not carry responsibility for the outcome.
You do.
That makes AI a tool for supporting decisions rather than a substitute for accountable leadership.
Think carefully about data
One of the first conversations I would encourage any business adopting AI to have is about data.
What information are employees putting into these systems?
Could it include:
• customer information;
• employee details;
• confidential commercial data;
• financial information;
• intellectual property;
• contracts;
• commercially sensitive plans?
Businesses still need to meet their data protection responsibilities when using AI.
The Information Commissioner’s Office provides dedicated guidance covering AI and data protection, including governance, transparency, fairness and risk.
This means businesses should understand what data is being used, why it is being used and how the chosen technology handles it.
A simple internal AI policy can go a long way.
It might explain:
• which tools are approved;
• which information must not be entered;
• when a human needs to check the output;
• how factual information should be verified;
• who employees should approach when unsure.
It does not have to be complicated.
It does need to be understood.
Give your people permission to experiment responsibly
AI adoption is not only a technology project.
It is a leadership and skills challenge.
Employees are far more likely to identify useful applications because they understand the everyday frustrations in their own roles.
Ask your team:
What repetitive task would you most like to stop doing manually?
You may receive much better ideas than you would get from starting with a list of software products.
Create some boundaries, agree sensible rules and then allow people to test ideas.
The goal is not experimentation for the sake of experimentation.
The goal is to find improvements that genuinely help the business.
Try the one-hour AI challenge
If you run a business in Berkshire and you have been wondering where to begin, here is a simple exercise.
Set aside one hour.
Step 1: Identify three repetitive tasks
Write down three activities that consume time every week.
Step 2: Choose one
Pick the task that is relatively low-risk and easy to measure.
Step 3: Test AI
See whether an appropriate AI tool could complete part of the task.
Step 4: Compare the result
Ask:
• Was it faster?
• Was the quality good enough?
• What needed correcting?
• Did it actually save time?
• Would you use it again?
Step 5: Document what worked
If you have found a better process, capture it so somebody else in the business can repeat it.
That is a small experiment.
But small experiments can lead to significant productivity gains.
Where Berkshire businesses can get support
Sometimes the challenge is not knowing whether AI can help.
It is working out which business issue should be addressed first.
That is where talking your plans through with somebody can be valuable.
At Berkshire Growth Hub, we work with businesses at different stages, from people developing their first business idea through to established SMEs looking to grow and scale.
Our support is impartial, practical and focused on helping you move forward.
That might mean exploring productivity.
It might mean looking at your strategy.
It could involve marketing, finance, business processes, leadership or identifying other specialist support.
AI is simply another tool that can form part of that wider growth conversation.
My final advice: start with the business, not the technology
There will always be another AI platform.
Another feature.
Another headline.
Another prediction about how business is going to change.
You do not need to chase all of them.
Instead, understand where your business is trying to go.
Identify what is getting in the way.
Then consider whether AI can help you remove some of those obstacles.
Start small.
Measure what happens.
Keep your people involved.
Protect your data.
And scale what genuinely works.
That is a much more sustainable route to using AI than adopting technology simply because everybody else is talking about it.
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Ready to explore your next business challenge?
Whether you are looking at AI, productivity, marketing, funding or your wider growth strategy, Berkshire Growth Hub offers fully funded business support to eligible businesses across Berkshire.
Speak to a Berkshire Growth Hub Business Adviser and explore the practical steps that could help your business move forward.
