How to deploy AI successfully in your business

John Cradden outlines ways for SME owner managers to safely and successfully implement AI in their business.

‘AI anxiety’ is definitely a thing these days. While it can take many forms depending on your situation, for small business owners any worries about this nascent technology will be predominantly about the risks of falling behind competitors if your firm fails to adopt AI tools in a meaningful way.

If you haven’t even started, you’ll be joining roughly 20% of Irish SMEs who are still not using AI for any business task as yet, according to recent research commissioned by Google.

The smaller the business, the more likely it won’t have started on its AI journey yet, with just one third of micro-businesses (under 10 employees) not using AI at all compared with just 7% of larger SMEs (50-250 employees).

That’s not to say owners are pessimistic. The Google survey of 400 Irish SMEs shows that 80% believe AI can positively impact their business and 65% expect it to drive growth in 2026, even while adoption remains limited in reality.

The main barriers preventing greater AI adoption included fear of making mistakes, lack of skills and cost.

Avoid the hype but still reap the rewards

So how can you practically and safely implement AI in your business all the while avoiding the hype, reducing risk and spending no more than you have to?

The key is to ignore the notion of AI as a technology that will replace entire functions in your company and focus on how you can use AI tools to improve productivity of these functions today, starting with the automation of the most repetitive, high-volume tasks that you can integrate into workflows.

Some examples here include:

Customer communication: website chatbots handling FAQs, AI-generated replies to common emails, and voice agents answering phone calls and routing to humans when an issue needs escalating.

Lead follow-ups: chatbots that qualify leads by asking 2–3 questions, automated email and SMS follow-ups, and CRM issuing updates and reminders.

Content and marketing generation: automating social media posts, ads, blogs, email campaigns and product descriptions

Admin: auto-generating invoices, reports, summaries, meeting notes/action items, scheduling, and calendar coordination.

Finance: automated cash flow forecasting, expense categorisation, pricing suggestions

Operations: Demand forecasting, smart reordering of inventory, dynamic pricing and supply chain alerts

Apply your own expertise to AI

All these can be really effective applications of AI that you can implement today, and enablesyou to ensure that your business is focused on a real problem rather than chasing the hype.

That’s not to say there aren’t other potential pitfalls, such as over-automating functions to the point that you end up annoying customers, both new and existing. The ideal is to assist your staff to deal with customers more quickly and effectively rather than replace them.

Similarly, if your data is all over the place and staff are not trained properly, there is a big risk of breaching privacy and data-handling laws. Scaling too fast and choosing the wrong tools can also undermine your investment in AI.

On that note, how to evaluate the return on investment in AI tools isn’t just about cost vs return, but also about whether it actually solves problems or improves how your business is run.

Before you implement an AI tool for a specific purpose, establish a baseline by recording how much time is spent on a task (eg. customer support, content generation, financial reporting), the costs of the task, and any metrics for the kinds of output that result in a tangible benefit for the business.  This could be in the form of revenue growth, but also cost savings and efficiency gains.

There is also the matter of how to train employees to work effectively with whatever AI tools you choose to implement. You don’t need an engineering degree to get the most out of AI, but there are a mix of practical, critical, and collaborative skills required.

For instance, the quality of output from popular tools like OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft CoPilot or Google Gemini often depends on how you ask. This means that giving clear, specific instructions is crucial rather than asking vague, general questions. If you can provide context and example, this will also improve the output, while time spent refining prompts can further improve results.

nother important skill is in critical thinking because, as we all know well, AI can be wrong and is very often wrong. So being able to fact-check important outputs, spot inconsistencies or even determine if it makes sense. This includes any data that is produced – are there any numbers or trends or averages that don’t sound correct or is inconsistent?

Editing skills are also very useful if you need to clean up AI outputs, which may involve re-writing for tone and accuracy, adjusting for context and combining with other ideas.

You can apply your own expertise to AI outputs in other ways too, including understanding the legal and reputation risks involved. This could include avoiding the use or sharing of sensitive data, knowing when to spot bias or inappropriate information and, above all, knowing when not to use AI.

If you’d like to learn more, Google has teamed up with the Local Enterprise Office to run AI Works for Ireland, a series of complimentary, face-to-face regional events aimed at equipping SMEs with practical AI skills for business. Over selected dates in April and May, there will be events in Galway, Cork and Monaghan.

As part of the initiative, Google and the Local Enterprise Office network are providing up to 10,000 AI scholarships to workers across Ireland.

Delivered through Coursera, the Google AI Professional Certificate offers practical training across more than 20 real-world AI business use cases, from data analysis and content creation to customer communications. 

• Bank of Ireland is welcoming new customers every day – funding investments, working capital and expansions across multiple sectors. To learn more, click here

• For support in challenging times, click here

• Listen to the ThinkBusiness Podcast for business insights and inspiration. All episodes are here. You can also listen to the Podcast on:

• Spotify

• SoundCloud

• Apple