What the numbers say: Small businesses expect to spend between $45,000 and $142,000 on digital tools over the next 12 months, per a survey done by Intuit Quickbooks. AI and e-commerce tools were a top spending priority for 73% of the respondents. Relevance: Startups intend to leverage AI tools to reduce labor costs and improve operational efficiency. Their main priorities are streamlining marketing and content creation, analyzing customer trends, and automating customer service support, as confirmed by 34%, 32%, and 31% of the respondents, respectively. Where to see the impact: 43% of founders intend to use the time freed up by allocating tasks to AI systems to develop customer relationships, while 36% said they would focus on products and services. In another survey done by Wakefield Research and Microsoft, 47% of small business owners expected AI to be a valuable asset to their business. |
