It's time to make AI work for SMEs | Mastercard Newsroom

You bought the AI tool. You set it up. Nobody used it. That's not a you problem. That's a product problem. Most AI tools are built for everyone, which means they're optimised for no one. Mastercard

You bought the AI tool. You set it up. Nobody used it.

That's not a you problem. That's a product problem.


Most AI tools are built for everyone, which means they're optimised for no one. Mastercard recently called it out directly — small business owners are handed a "generalist blob of capability" and told to figure it out. No wonder it gathers digital dust.

The real issue isn't AI adoption. It's that nobody matched the tool to your actual bottleneck. Invoicing delays. Customer follow-up gaps. Proposal writing that eats three hours a week. These are solvable problems. But only if you start there, not at the tool.

After 500+ projects, the pattern is consistent. Businesses that win with AI pick one painful, repetitive task and automate just that. Nothing else changes. No new hires. No system overhaul. Just one problem, solved, with a measurable result inside 30 days.


Here's the move: List the three tasks your team complains about most. Pick the one with the clearest time cost. That's your first AI use case — not a strategy, just a starting point.


What's the task you'd most like to stop doing manually — and have you tried automating it yet?

#SmallBusiness #AIStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SME

Original Source

The expectation for small business owners is rather different: sit down with a generalist AI tool, which can feel like an amorphous blob of capability ...