AI must solve immediate SME bottlenecks
For a small business under delivery pressure, AI becomes useful when it clears a bottleneck quickly enough to create value today.
Developed from a conversation between Pete Winn, Kane Leersen and Andy David
Small and medium-sized businesses do not have much room for speculative technology programmes. Their survival depends on getting work out the door, which gives AI a demanding practical test. It must make money, save time or remove a constraint that is already limiting the business.
Kane saw that contrast when a large corporate partner visited Regional Prosperity, his regional financial advice business. The partner presented an AI project that would solve a problem in two years. Regional Prosperity had already solved it. The firm was bottlenecked and could not wait while clients needed help with cancer diagnoses, dementia, divorce, home purchases and business sales.
That urgency can be an advantage. Kane focuses on the current constraint, tests a small response and invests further only when it works. Regional Prosperity concentrated first on the technology holding back its capacity, then shifted attention to brand once the team could process more work. For an SME, AI earns its place through that direct line from a pressing problem to a result the business can use now.