Small to medium-sized enterprises are under constant pressure to enhance productivity, streamline operations, drive growth, and keep their teams working together. It used to be there weren’t any quick or easy solutions to doing all this at once.  

For example, you could hire more staff, but the added expense could erode the benefits of your growth. Or you could streamline operations by making a few people do more work, but that would pose a huge risk to productivity.  

With artificial intelligence arriving on the scene, SMEs now have choices to do all of this. AI has the potential to give each team help where they need it the most to help them work more efficiently and effectively doing what they were hired to do. 

Step up your sales reps’ game 

Salespeople can end up juggling a lot of “side-quests” that take them away from talking to prospects and bringing in new customers. It might be good to, for example, comb through a CRM to keep prospect details up to date, but if tasks that keep you away from customers take 60% of your time, you really could use some help.  

AI can step up a sales team game by automating routine tasks. According to one report, AI tools can take care of up to 20% of a salesperson’s repetitive tasks, but it can also be used for managing and prioritising emails, quickly analyse data, and generate reports. 

Bridge the communication gap between marketing and sales 

Marketing and sales have to work together smoothly to effectively grow the business. Any cross-departmental friction can hinder these efforts, and the last thing these two teams need is a communication gap. Yet, a lack of effective communication is a more common problem than you might expect, according to one survey of marketing professionals.  

Marketing is usually siloed from sales, which means the teams can be working off different data and making different conclusions. AI can help bridge this gap, getting both teams on the same page when it comes to customer insights and lead prioritisation. 

Help customer support make customers feel loved 

Customer support seems simple in theory. Most customers just want to feel heard. Well, they want their problems solved and questions answered, too, but the more they feel like they're being attended to and valued, the easier they are to deal with. It gets more complicated when the customer has a more complicated problem or has not patience. 

AI can be your customer support team’s best friend. On the front line, there are the bots that can handle more and complex queries and provide a buffer for angry customers, giving your support people more time to use AI in sentiment analysis to improve overall service. 

Let AI crunch numbers with your finance people 

Productivity can seem like an over general term, but according to one survey, finance teams say their biggest challenges are streamlining processes and improving...productivity.  AI almost seems especially suited to their particular challenges.  

Just like their colleagues in sales (and let’s face it, every department) finance teams can end up spending too much time doing mundane tasks. AI can automate some of these, like invoice processing, reconciliation, and data structure comparisons.  Additionally, it can help analyse data sets used in decision-making and risk analyses and identify anomalies and potential risks. 

AI for IT (or any project-oriented team) 

IT projects sometimes have the habit of getting out of control when not properly managed. The scope can drift, stakeholders can change their minds, and the scale can change with each new circumstance.  

AI can play a pivotal role supporting IT or any team that works on a project-to-project basis. AI can be used generate comprehensive project plans, ensuring efficient resource allocation and task management; assist in crafting presentations to communicate project details, milestones, and progress; and help facilitate timely updates of reports and emails derived from those reports.