Authored by Adrian Towsey, Area Vice President, Salesforce leading the Emerging, Small & Medium Business segments across Australia & New Zealand
It’s rare for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) to have the upper hand. So often, enterprises can more easily overcome the barriers – especially those around resources and financing – that can stop a small business in its tracks.
However, times are changing, and the opportunities provided by the latest technologies let SMBs level the playing field. Small businesses can deploy generative AI to create high-quality marketing content or harness valuable customer insights that previously may have been too time-intensive or expensive to produce. More recently, the arrival of autonomous AI agents has helped small business leaders reimagine what’s possible with AI when it is integrated into the flow of work, and not just another tool added on to an already bulging tech stack.
SMB teams around Australia are now more confident in implementing AI, giving them an edge over enterprise counterparts. Unlike bigger businesses, they’re often not locked in to specific AI platforms, giving them the power to try out many different solutions in a short time frame.
A recent Salesforce survey of 600 IT professionals worldwide revealed that enterprise IT teams are five times more likely than SMB IT teams to struggle balancing speed, business value, and security when implementing new technologies like AI.
When it comes to business value, the study shows that SMBs are reaping more comprehensive benefits from AI, while enterprises focus on automating routine tasks. SMB teams report the top three benefits they see from AI as improved business insights, improved collaboration across teams, and increased revenue – whereas enterprise teams cite automating routine tasks, increased efficiency, and increased speed of decision making. It seems SMBs are increasingly aware of edging ahead of enterprises in AI implementation – investing in their people to ensure they get the most out of this technology.
We saw this clearly at Sydney’s Royal Randwick earlier this month, as the Agentforce World Tour arrived in Australia to give local business and tech leaders hands-on experience building their own autonomous AI agents. The feedback was overwhelming. For many small business operators, the shift in approach in this third wave of AI – one that emphasises a role-based application for technology compared to a tool-based approach – is proving to be an ‘aha’ moment for many.
These agents are now giving businesses context for the roles they can fulfil, providing a new level of autonomy grounded in an organisation’s data and customised guardrails.
It’s a shift that’s proving much easier for local SMBs to understand how they can contribute to the unique elements of a customer journey.
The emergence of SMBs as leaders in AI implementation presents significant implications for the business landscape. The agility they’re displaying in adopting this technology means they can quickly address market changes and shifting customer demand – and do it faster than their bigger competitors.
I see this every day in my work with our SMB customers, where we focus on unlocking data across departments by combining marketing, sales, service, and commerce. Looking ahead, it’s clear AI provides SMBs with new capabilities that ensure they can compete in ways they’ve never imagined.
The SMB community in Australia is large and incredibly diverse, and increasingly we are seeing them turn to AI to help with optimisation processes and scaling up. We’re also witnessing a step change in who is leading the charge to implement this new technology. We’re now seeing thought leaders in AI across all types of business leadership roles, and for the first time in my experience dealing with SMBs, every business now seems to have at least one AI champion, helping their business navigate new technology.
To make the most of AI’s opportunities, SMB leaders should take time now to consider where they can most effectively deploy the technology – whether by creating more personalised product offerings for customers, or fine-tuning a marketing strategy. By taking the time to understand what AI and autonomous agents can do, business owners will empower their teams to add value, quickly, to their daily workflows.
Here at Salesforce, we are looking at Agentforce to help humans and AI drive customer success together, equipping organisations with autonomous agents that will boost their scale, efficiency and satisfaction across service, sales, marketing, commerce and more.
Australian SMBs must seize this moment with urgency, and not let this opportunity to level the playing field pass them by.
Read now: What are the benefits of deploying AI agents in your business?
Salesforce, the global leader in customer relationship management (CRM), empowers companies to connect with their customers in a whole new way.
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