Artificial Intelligence and your Business
How can you make AI work effectively for your business?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to make headlines. Anthropic, the company behind chatbot Claude, has filed paperwork in the US to go public. At its last valuation, the company was worth £717 billion.
AI news is not all positive, though. For example, Instagram’s AI chatbot is reported to have been tricked by hackers into gaining access to other people’s accounts.
The BBC ran a feature article last week showing that many businesses seem to be confused about how best to roll out AI.
In some cases, it seems firms are prioritising the use of AI just so that they can say they are embracing it. Other businesses are looking for staff to use AI but are not always clear on why they are adopting it and how they expect to benefit.
Businesses could be wasting effort and missing out on potential gains. What are some practical suggestions you could use in your business to make sure that AI is working for you?
1. Define your objectives
First, consider what your reason for using AI is.
Are you looking to increase profitability so that you can sell the business? Are you trying to reduce time spent on low-value tasks to increase availability for higher-value tasks?
The clearer you are about why AI is important to your business, the more focused you will be in picking AI tools and promoting their use in ways that will benefit your business.
2. Map your processes before you automate them
Before reaching for an AI tool, document what your current processes actually look like.
If a process is already inefficient or poorly defined, using AI to automate it will often only produce inefficient or poor results faster.
Take time to map out the steps of a process and identify where the bottlenecks are. Then ask whether AI is the right solution or whether a simpler fix might do the job just as well.
3. Start small and measure everything
Pilot AI tools in one team or on one specific task rather than rolling them out across the whole business all at once.
Set clear criteria for what you are expecting to achieve before you begin and then evaluate honestly whether the results justify wider adoption.
What does success look like in concrete terms? Is it hours saved, error rates reduced or revenue generated? If you cannot measure it, you cannot know whether it is working.
4. Get staff onboard
If staff do not understand why a tool is being introduced or how to use it, it is unlikely they will use it effectively.
Anyone using AI tools should be given training on the ethics and risks of using AI, including its limitations. For instance, AI tools can exhibit bias and hallucinate information. They are also designed to flatter the user rather than provide objective information.
Involve staff early in identifying where AI could genuinely help them and make training practical and relevant to their actual role. Staff will be reluctant to use AI if they believe an AI tool is there to replace them, so be clear that the goal is to make their working lives easier, and not to replace them, if that is the case.
5. Assign clear ownership
Someone in the business needs to be responsible for your AI strategy. Without that role being looked after, tools get adopted inconsistently and they are not evaluated properly.
It does not need to be complicated. You might simply need to assign a senior person to take responsibility for reviewing what tools are in use, what they are costing and what they are achieving.
6. Review regularly and be willing to stop
AI tools, like any other business investment, should be reviewed periodically. What made sense 12 months ago may no longer be the best option.
Build in a regular review, quarterly or twice yearly, where you honestly assess which tools are earning their place and which are not.
7. Keep human judgment in the loop
AI can process information, generate options and surface patterns that humans might miss. What it cannot reliably do is exercise judgment, take accountability, or understand the nuances of your customer relationships and business culture.
Make sure that important decisions still involve a human who understands the context, and that your team knows when to trust the AI output and when to question it.
Conclusion
The businesses that will get the most from AI are not necessarily those that adopt it earliest or most enthusiastically. They are the ones that have the clearest view about what problem they are solving, the most disciplined about measuring results, and the most honest when something is not delivering.
Continue to treat AI as you would any other significant business investment, with curiosity, rigour and a healthy dose of scepticism.
Folkes Worton LLP Chartered Accountants
Accounting for the Future