What's the first step in adopting AI for a small business?
The first step is identifying a specific, measurable business problem — like response time, forecasting accuracy, or repetitive manual work — rather than starting with a particular AI tool. From there, assess whether the data needed to solve that problem is centralized and usable, since that's the most common blocker to a successful first project.
It's tempting to start by picking a flashy AI tool and looking for a use for it, but that order of operations is exactly backwards from what tends to work. The businesses with the smoothest AI rollouts started by writing down the three most annoying, repetitive parts of someone's job, then asked which one had the cleanest underlying data to work with.
Map out a realistic first AI project with a free maturity assessment.