Ateam pivots to M&A and AI as Q3 profit slips despite revenue uptick - The Globe and Mail

You bought the AI tool. Nobody used it. $200/month quietly canceled three months later. That's not a you problem. That's an adoption problem — and it's more common than any vendor will admit. Here's

You bought the AI tool. Nobody used it. $200/month quietly canceled three months later.

That's not a you problem. That's an adoption problem — and it's more common than any vendor will admit.

Here's what a Japanese media company called Ateam just reminded me of. They pivoted hard into AI to chase growth. Revenue went up. Profits went down. The lesson isn't that AI failed them — it's that chasing AI without a clear problem to solve first is just expensive experimentation.

Most business owners are sold on what AI can do in theory. Nobody walks them through what it should fix in their specific operation first.

The companies winning with AI right now aren't the boldest. They're the most specific. They picked one broken process, one time drain, one repeating headache — and fixed that first.

This week, write down the one task your team does manually that takes the most time and produces the least joy. That single answer is your AI starting point. Not a strategy. Not a platform. Just one problem with a measurable cost.

That's where your first real win lives.

What's the one AI tool or initiative you invested in that never got adopted — and looking back, do you know why?

#AIStrategy #SmallBusiness #BusinessGrowth #AIImplementation

Original Source

Ateam Holdings Co., Ltd. is a Japan-based company operating across digital and media-related businesses, with a focus on advertising-driven services.