How to adopt AI in the workplace and how lack of AI confidence is holding businesses back

It's lack of confidence and capability holding businesses back when it comes to AI adoption, Xero's executive general manager of technology and research James Bergin says, with the divide of those keen to utilise new tools widening with those who aren't.

Xero's study on AI awareness, adoption and impact surveyed 1081 of their customers in April. Seventy per cent of those surveyed were sole traders with no employees, 27% had 1-19 employees and 3% had more than 20 staff.

They were split into archetypes based on AI use, perception and adoption. There were the' trailblazers' (15%) who use AI extensively and consider themselves as advanced users, the 'explorers' (44%) who were familiar with AI and using it for specific tasks, the 'pragmatists' (15%) who had a basic understanding and were staring to trial it, and 'sceptics' (26%) who had a low understanding and trust in AI, with security and over-reliance concerns.

Bergin said just over 60% of small businesses were proactively using AI technologies in some form, but mostly learning through trial and error, and experimentation.

"There's really strong interest, but there's a need for practical guidance because the biggest barrier was confidence. They're interested in using the technologies, but many are still unsure on how to use it safely or where it can add the most value," he said.

For those experimenting with AI, Bergin said that's where businesses start looking at how to bake the technologies in.

So - how do you use AI if you're not tech savvy?

Bergin said modelling your processes is the first step.

"Be clear on what are the top 10 things you do that day and how do you do them - and you can actually use AI to help with that.

"You can use any one of the [Claude, ChatGPT, etc] tools and give it a prompt like: 'You're an expert in business process modelling, help me model out my key processes so I can really understand how my business works. Ask me questions to clarify requirements, and then give me a nice flowchart that shows the top 10."

Ask how AI can help

"Once you have that, you've then got something... really useful as a starting point to then either use AI itself to help you explore and say: 'Okay, based on these processes or based on these functions that I perform every week...How could AI capabilities that have come online help? How could they assist?'

Bergin said it is not like with previous technological changes where a user may need to learn code or understand some of the infrastructure.

"You can just use natural language and say: 'Hey, I'm a third generation business owner, and this is what my business is, and I'm struggling to understand how this might be able to help with me," he said.

"Go and tell me the five or six different ways I could explore, go do some research on others in this industry and what they've done, tell me some use cases that people have shown a benefit' [from]."

Experiment

Then see if it may work.

"When I say experiment, I mean like how we all learned to do it in high school - state your hypothesis, your method of how you're going to test it, and then you get some results and observations.

"I'm going to run a controlled experiment of using it in this place, and I'm going to learn for myself in my context. Does that actually help shift the dial? Does it shift the needle? And if so, great. Then I'll try a different experiment."

The cost

In the survey, a total of 64% said AI had saved them time, 52% said it had increased productivity and 17% said it had reduced costs.

Asked whether AI actually reduced costs, or increased productivity, or was costly due to the price of use, Bergin said it depended on the business.

"Is it that it's enabling people to do more? Is it that it's reducing costs of some things? Is there then an additional cost in terms of what it's costing to use the technology? And the answer is yes, yes and yes."

But an important question was, was it enabling people to do more, he said. 

"Rather than artificial intelligence, I prefer to say augmented intelligence. Like it's augmenting our intelligence, our ability to do things. If it's doing that in a way where you can do more in the time that you had allocated, then you'll be more productive," said Bergin.

"For small businesses, because they run that full gamut of different types of businesses, it's never going to be a one-size-fits-all approach. It's one of those things where it's the finding the efficiency gains, the productivity gains, the improving of the service, the increasing your revenue, and then the cost reduction gains."

"It's a combination of all those things, and it's this wonderful kind of messiness that means that every small business can carve out what it means for them."