AI In Your Business

Paul Kelly ICHYB · Jan 22, 2025

Like it or not, AI is here and is only going to muscle its way more into our lives.

Developers and promoters will tell you that it can do anything and it can do a lot of the mundane stuff, but I still see much of it as extended automation.

If you could have AI do something for you to help your business, what would it be? Remember, that we are not talking about anything physical (YET!).

Ozzy · Jan 22, 2025

I have used AI in the following areas; and been pleased with the results.

Reviewing several separate CSV files of 3-4 years of data and providing me with trend reports and analysis of that data; without needing me or someone else to create pivot tables and formulas in Excel.

I've had it review several threads on similar subjects on these forums, and it also found other threads on the same subject I hadn't seen myself. It summarised the content posted by different members, picked up some answers based on likes and upvotes, that I was able to use in publications.

I've also had it review code, draft code and run code tests. This was Google's version, not ChatGPT

..and i don't know if this counts as AI but I use Grammarly all the time as my spelling, grammar and ability to just write is pretty poor.

Ozzy · Jan 22, 2025

Worth also pinging @Data Swami as I'm in conversations with them about the social media AI tool being developed, as I'm intrigued by its ability to consume and analyse RSS feeds to create a social media campaign.

Paul Kelly ICHYB · Jan 22, 2025

JEREMY HAWKE · Jan 22, 2025

I am going to learn as much about this as I can

Customer booking management and pending loads diary I am sure could be utilised in a far more efficient way than we do it now and I think IA might be the answer

I know that cross border customs management is going to benefit a great deal from it especially where different languages are used and the US imperial conversion to metric measurements

Mark T Jones · Jan 22, 2025

I expect to see it come into our industry in certain areas - deal selection, information requests and occasionally underwriting (what is the boundary between AI & algorithms?)

Personally, with not too many years left in the industry I will wave the human voice flag as an alternative to AI

fisicx · Jan 22, 2025

Much of my work requires conversations with clients about how they want their project to work. And then once the demo has been published there is lots of fiddling about getting the small details to work.

Where AI has helped is integrating APIs. For example, I did a project where we pulled energy data from a feed, filtered, sorted and then displayed the results. AI did all the heavy lifting on the API leaving me to play about with the layout and CSS.

AI isn't very good at meeting standards. In particular writing code that passes all the compliance tests for platforms such as WordPress.

I tasked an AI expert to create a specific plugin with a fixed set of features and functions. The specifications ran to 6 pages. The primary clause was the plugin had to pass the tests necessary for uploading to the wordpress repository. They were unable to deliver as the AI tools really didn't understand all the WP functions.

But for API integration it was excellent.

Data Swami · Jan 22, 2025

Paul Kelly ICHYB said:
Like it or not, AI is here and is only going to muscle its way more into our lives.

Developers and promoters will tell you that it can do anything and it can do a lot of the mundane stuff, but I still see much of it as extended automation.

If you could have AI do something for you to help your business, what would it be? Remember, that we are not talking about anything physical (YET!).

So you are not wrong it being extension of automation. But i believe that was always going to be the case. We can however build "agents" that can learn which would be the next step but that requires alot more complexity. Not impossible but in many cases not really needed.

My focus on building AI Agents is to take over the repetitive admin heavy tasks to give me time back. So first up was saving a day per week going through the motions of scheduling social media content for Linkedin, FB, X and Instagram including trying to find images etc. So I have automated with AI to be able to post daily for me on all the platforms tailored for each of them and creating an image to go with it relevant to the content. While also enabling me to have an interface to post on the go if im out and about just by explaining what i am doing. Or scheduling a curated post all from 1 interface. No need to log into a scheduling app or each of the platforms etc etc.

It has resulted in alot of lessons learnt though. The most important parts of the process can be the prompts but its also the knowledgebase and training of the models to make sure we have the right inputs so it can gauge my tone of voice, structure of posts etc etc that make it me.

The next steps are more focused on sales so automations to help make the pursuit of leads much easier. Rather than spending the time on admin to utilise different platforms to get conversations going plus researching potential leads.

To help with all of my AI work I am ensuring I align myself with a few partnerships with people who are able to help construct the right inputs for our AI Agents so that for each of our users its supremely tailored to each of those uses. So things like Ideal Client Profiles, Brand Messaging Guidelines, etc etc. Main reason for this is 1 its an opportunity for new leads but also they are the experts at extracting the right detail for us to be able to use.

ThatDevAaron · Jan 23, 2025

We're developing a lot of AI tools here, also trying our best to design infrastructure best suited to AI resource consumption, as self-hosting our own internal AI for technical, and support-related tasks, is a major long-term goal of ours.

AI for data-crunching, is a useful tool, we often use AI for things we'd normally need to outsource-for, examples consist of, perhaps one of our system administrators writing code/system documentation, and us querying an AI to format the plain-text into readable, well-styled, simple HTML.

WaveJumper · Jan 23, 2025

Anyone making use of AI in their accounting processes

Paul Kelly ICHYB · Jan 23, 2025

WaveJumper said:
Anyone making use of AI in their accounting processes

Any specific tasks?

This is what I want to get to.

I have seen AI do outbound calling (but not get around the UK sense of sarcasm), build documents, answer questions, but many of these I would still consider good automation rather than utilising AI.

Data Swami · Jan 23, 2025

WaveJumper said:
Anyone making use of AI in their accounting processes

Which part of the Accounting process are you thinking? Its definitely possible to automate with AI for somethings like Quickbooks, Xero etc

Ozzy · Jan 23, 2025

WaveJumper said:
Anyone making use of AI in their accounting processes

This is financial modelling, so part of the accounting activity,

Ozzy said:
Reviewing several separate CSV files of 3-4 years of data and providing me with trend reports and analysis of that data; without needing me or someone else to create pivot tables and formulas in Excel.

Reviewing years of various activity, payments/invoices/retention and then applying levers to forecast scenarios.

pavp · Jan 27, 2025

Most new tech can be distilled at a high level into the term “automation” eg: pen + paper -> calculator -> excel -> predictive model

But this downplays the new capabilities, cost, time-save people gain. imo it's the same with AI.

Tangibly here's what I use AI for and so do our customers (other small biz owners):

Meeting notes: using Granloa to summarise meeting notes and action items
Legal contracts: (probably not recommended) but great for creating or reviewing less important contracts eg: low cost/short duration agency agreements
Code Generation: using Cursor to crank code
Tech side projects: I setup a listing/directory business and did not have to pay a tech agency to do this (probs saved $30k)
Creating briefs: writing down a 1/2 baked brief (to product person / agency / new hire) and having ChatGPT tighten it before my final editing
Brainstorming / Idea generation: coming up with sections of a blog post / social media post ideas / product ideas - it's therapeutic to write down vague thoughts + chat through with an LLM - kind of like journaling on steroids
Social Media:
- image post creation it can't quite do "product images" to a standard which we find acceptable in our e-commerce brand but it's great for “filler content” eg: sustainability = show some image gen trees, the materials we use + add a text overlay
- Or text posts for LinkedIn and blogs ofc it's good at a first pass
- Or reviewing instagram profiles and posts for improvement tips
Email Sequences: creating a first draft on a sales email outreach sequence or follow-up emails from signing up to our product

Within our platform bigteam.ai customers use AI to build a website without coding (chat to website) plus a lot of the above usecases too.

I think improving prompts to better models like OpenAI o1 / o1-pro or claude 3.5 can get people a far higher output than they expect, we realised this after looking at Bolt.new's system prompt and worked this into our platform for targeted usecases

fisicx · Jan 27, 2025

Most people can build a website without coding these days. You don’t need AI to do this.

Most of the hard work is creating the content - AI still isn’t very good at this.

Ozzy · Jan 27, 2025

pavp said:
I think improving prompts to better models like OpenAI o1 / o1-pro or claude 3.5 can get people a far higher output than they expect, we realised this after looking at Bolt.new's system prompt and worked this into our platform for targeted usecases

Excellent link; I've just read through that prompt structure and improved my prompt skills 10 fold. I didn't know half of that was even possible within AI prompting.
Thank you!

pavp · Jan 27, 2025

100% agree, but a lot of our customers have tried stuff like Wix and struggled with the interface finding it hard to use the platform - we believe that AI allows for greater control for a user who does not need to learn these website building tools and only using natural language.

Generally when something becomes simpler to use, keeping the output quality consistent it opens up additional markets and opportunity.

This was the same for design tools like Photoshop -> Canva and Video Editing Adobe Premier Pro -> Capcut. I wrote about this here: https://keepingsoftwaresimple.substack.com/p/simple-tools-create-markets-by-empowering

fisicx said:
Most people can build a website without coding these days. You don’t need AI to do this.

Most of the hard work is creating the content - AI still isn’t very good at this.

fisicx · Jan 27, 2025

But 6 months later and they now want to integrate the FB feed, add a booking form, create a gallery, allow comments and the zillion other things people do once a site goes live. The AI generated site is often far less useful than spending time learning how to use one of the many online platforms.

I agree the learning curve can be steep but there are many tutorials and support sites you can refer to. I suspect those who struggle and more likely to be those who can't be bothered to learn. And will be the same clients who complain about a lack of sales or ranking or conversions or whatever.

And of course many have discovered using AI for content generation was less than satisfactory.

Jon @AIMAI · Jan 5, 2026

I think the interesting bit is that most of the challenges leaders talk about aren’t really “task” problems.

They’re decision problems.

Seeing the right signals early enough.
Interpreting them consistently across teams.
Acting in time without overreacting.

That’s why AI often feels like extended automation. We’re aiming it at the edges of work rather than at the intelligence of the organisation itself.

If I could have AI help with one thing, it wouldn’t be doing more admin. It would be helping the business think more coherently as a system:

highlighting where decisions are slow, inconsistent, or based on partial information
surfacing patterns leaders don’t have time to spot across data, conversations, and operations
exposing where intent at the top isn’t translating into day-to-day behaviour

In more regulated or complex environments, that matters even more. The risk isn’t AI doing the wrong thing. It’s different parts of the organisation making “reasonable” decisions that don’t line up.

Used that way, AI doesn’t replace leadership.
It makes leadership more visible.

Interested to see whether others are thinking along similar lines?

Newchodge · Jan 5, 2026

You assume there is 'intelligence of the organisation'. If there were, you would not need AI.

Jon @AIMAI · Jan 5, 2026

Newchodge said:
You assume there is 'intelligence of the organisation'. If there were, you would not need AI.

If an organisation is intelligent in the sense that it can sense, interpret, and respond, it will naturally want to harness the fastest-iterating form of intelligence available. AI doesn’t replace organisational intelligence, it accelerates it.

fisicx · Jan 5, 2026

Jon @AIMAI said:
If an organisation is intelligent in the sense that it can sense, interpret, and respond, it will naturally want to harness the fastest-iterating form of intelligence available. AI doesn’t replace organisational intelligence, it accelerates it.

It can but usually doesn't. Mainly because the c-suite just expects AI to do all the magic without anyone putting in any effort.

You are clearly part of an AI business which may be able to do great things. But the biggest problem is people don't want AI. What they want is more productivity, bigger profits, lower costs. They don't care how this happens. I understand what you are suggesting and your video makes sense. But it's not selling me anything. It gets rapidly boring. I want you to show me how to make more money. It might not even need AI. It could be as simple as a process change to reduce touch points.

Sell the sizzle not the sausage.

Jon @AIMAI · Jan 5, 2026

fisicx said:
It can but usually doesn't. Mainly because the c-suite just expects AI to do all the magic without anyone putting in any effort.

You are clearly part of an AI business which may be able to do great things. But the biggest problem is people don't want AI. What they want is more productivity, bigger profits, lower costs. They don't care how this happens. I understand what you are suggesting and your video makes sense. But it's not selling me anything. It gets rapidly boring. I want you to show me how to make more money. It might not even need AI. It could be as simple as a process change to reduce touch points.

Sell the sizzle not the sausage.

I agree. Businesses may not be asking for AI, they want results. More output, lower cost, fewer headaches, more profit.
If AI is harnessed properly, it can bring key processes and decisions together across an organisation to reduce cost and increase profit.
Add low-cost, high-speed intelligence in the right way and it’s hard to see how that doesn’t improve the sizzle.

fisicx · Jan 5, 2026

Jon @AIMAI said:
If AI is harnessed properly, it can bring key processes and decisions together across an organisation to reduce cost and increase profit.

Yes it can. But the business wants you to visit and set it all up for them. Which means looking at processes, management structures, documentation, external influences, staff attitudes and training and all the other things business improvement consultants do when they visit.

Jon @AIMAI · Jan 6, 2026

Jon @AIMAI said:
I agree. Businesses may not be asking for AI, they want results. More output, lower cost, fewer headaches, more profit.
If AI is harnessed properly, it can bring key processes and decisions together across an organisation to reduce cost and increase profit.
Add low-cost, high-speed intelligence in the right way and it’s hard to see how that doesn’t improve the sizzle.

By the way, thanks for the feedback on the video. We're going to chop it down a bit, make it more snappy so it has some sizzle!

Jon @AIMAI · Jan 6, 2026

fisicx said:
Yes it can. But the business wants you to visit and set it all up for them. Which means looking at processes, management structures, documentation, external influences, staff attitudes and training and all the other things business improvement consultants do when they visit.

That’s exactly the problem. Traditional transformation programmes are overwhelming, slow, and expensive, so businesses understandably avoid them.

Our experience has been that change doesn’t need to look like that. We start with short 1-to-1 conversations with the C-suite to understand key pain points and intent, get sign-off on priorities, then improve the business one task at a time. Low cost, low disruption, and sustainable.

fisicx · Jan 6, 2026

Jon @AIMAI said:
Our experience has been that change doesn’t need to look like that. We start with short 1-to-1 conversations with the C-suite to understand key pain points and intent, get sign-off on priorities, then improve the business one task at a time. Low cost, low disruption, and sustainable.

In other words, you do the same as any other business consultant.

The solution isn’t AI. it is often a combination of different things, one of which may be AI.

Ozzy · Jan 6, 2026

fisicx said:
The solution isn’t AI

Although I agree with the sentiment, I don't feel the answer is as clear cut as you say.
As business owners we need to speak the language of our customers, and the bandwagon train right now is 'we need to use AI' (what we think of it is irrelevant in this context).

So if the businesses are saying 'we need to use AI' then a consultant that speaks that first could stand out from the competition, because they lead with the 'I will help you use AI'. It doesn't matter that ultimately they do nothing different from any other business consultant, but they are meeting their customer where their customers are looking....and just happen to have some skills in AI to put meaningful and useful automations in place.

GLAbusiness · Jan 18, 2026

I used AI to help me build a debug capability into an excel workbook with 80+ vba routines. This creates a technical audit log of the way each routine is called and executed. The main purpose was to simplify support for the workbook. It has already saved hours of debug time as the workbook is developed.

AI did not build this. I built it but used AI as a sounding block for ideas and to provide some code snippets.

fisicx · Jan 18, 2026

I used AI today for a complex Regex and jQuery function. Took three different prompts to get exactly what I wanted but it was quicker than trying to work it our myself.

I also needed a newsletter intro for a charity I work for and ChatGPT gave me a decent bit of prose to work with.

One for @Frank the Insurance guy here, using AI could save you 3 minutes per day!

AI chatbot might save insurance agents 3 minutes a day

: Does that kind of time saving actually pay for itself?

www.theregister.com

NickGrogan · Jan 20, 2026

Used AI to build a wordpress site, all content and design was created by AI.

17 hits from Google search so far.
4 enquiries from those 17 hits.
First sale completed today.

johndon68 · Jan 21, 2026

I've been using Claude AI to generate PHP code for a new project (I'm fairly new to PHP so it has been a huge timesaver) but, today, when tasked to do something which it was unable to generate working code for, it eventually gave up, removed it's attempts from the code and told me that what I wanted was 'too complicated'...

fisicx · Jan 21, 2026

And that is what all developers are discovering.

And you may also discover the php it has created is insecure. AI doesn’t understand escaping or XSS

NickGrogan · Jan 21, 2026

fisicx said:
And that is what all developers are discovering.

And you may also discover the php it has created is insecure. AI doesn’t understand escaping or XSS

It does if you ask it to, but not by default.

johndon68 said:
, it eventually gave up, removed it's attempts from the code and told me that what I wanted was 'too complicated'...

Ask it to find another way

johndon68 · Jan 21, 2026

NickGrogan said:
It does if you ask it to, but not by default.

Ask it to find another way

Ended up doing it manually.

Trevor Fifield · Feb 4, 2026

Jon @AIMAI said:
If an organisation is intelligent in the sense that it can sense, interpret, and respond, it will naturally want to harness the fastest-iterating form of intelligence available. AI doesn’t replace organisational intelligence, it accelerates it.

Exactly this. Generative AI, which is what most people are referring to here is only as good as what you give it, it’s all about the data and context. Chained events, “agents”, can be set up to carry out multiple tasks asynchronously and with tools such as moltbot (use with caution and expert advice) we’re edging closer to automation that only really needs a simple message to kick off these chains of tasks, all the tasks anyone sitting behind a PC would be doing in the day to day anyway.

fisicx · Feb 4, 2026

Trevor Fifield said:
Chained events, “agents”, can be set up to carry out multiple tasks asynchronously and with tools such as moltbot….

Or maybe not:

Clouds rush to deliver OpenClaw-as-a-service offerings

: As analyst house Gartner declares AI tool ‘comes with unacceptable cybersecurity risk’ and urges admins to snuff it out

www.theregister.com

Trevor Fifield · Feb 4, 2026

fisicx said:
Or maybe not:

Hence why I said use with caution and get expert help. The problem is a lot of people using the tool have installed it on their personal desktop and allowed it access to everything including credentials which is madness. But my point was really the fact that this stuff is emerging, my background is enterprise but a lot of these alternatives are too expensive for SMEs and open source tools appearing like this is showing we’re not far off.

Peter Briggs · Feb 10, 2026

Hi, I'm new to the forum. I am a PhD student studying machine learning adoption intention in SMEs.

I noticed this thread about AI in business, and I'm curious to know how many of you understand the concepts and benefits of machine learning in business and industry?

The reason I ask is that many people use the term "artificial intelligence" but they don't realise that it is an umbrella term for several different AI-based technologies, machine learning being one. Similar to the way "industry 4.0" represents several technologies associated with the fourth industrial revolution.

Mark T Jones · Feb 10, 2026

Peter Briggs said:
Hi, I'm new to the forum. I am a PhD student studying machine learning adoption intention in SMEs.

I noticed this thread about AI in business, and I'm curious to know how many of you understand the concepts and benefits of machine learning in business and industry?

The reason I ask is that many people use the term "artificial intelligence" but they don't realise that it is an umbrella term for several different AI-based technologies, machine learning being one. Similar to the way "industry 4.0" represents several technologies associated with the fourth industrial revolution.

The return question is does your average business owner (user) need or want to know the difference

It's undoubtedly important within the industry, but users need to know benefits and outcomes, not the nuances and technical terminology.

Cookie Consent

Essential

Analytics

Marketing

AI In Your Business

Founder of UKBF

Founder of UKBF

Founder of UKBF

Founder of UKBF

Founder of UKBF