At 6.30 am in the morning, a business owner is all set to open the Coffee shop, unlocking the mobile device and pulled up the AI Powered assistant – Business Health Dashboard. Within seconds the system pulled up: all accounts, sales & expense histories, local weather forecasts, up-coming event information with past event data and informed they would require additional 2000 coffee cups,10 kg of coffee powder, and 4 sets of new filters for the coming week. Then the owner ordered them online with a single click!
The business owner knew the shop needed a new Latte coffee machine, but the purchase has been on hold for over couple of months. Now the money saving in the bank account could either go for the purchase of new coffee machine or make a term loan payment that had been taken out 3 years prior, to start the business. If the purchase is postponed, there is a high chance of coffee machine break-down at any moment, this speciality Latte was the top selling item on the menu. On the other side delaying the loan payment for another month will add interest.
Now the business owner asks the Artificial Intelligence (AI) -powered assistant for advice. It reported “You can do both – purchase & repay Loan payment”, based on your expected sales for the month, it looks like you can pay the loan amount from your savings and use your available credit card limit to purchase the coffee machine. When the credit card reaches the payment due in 30 days, you can pay this cash with the current sales projections. Then with a single click, the owner ordered the coffee machine from his mobile device as well.
At the end of the day, as the business owner was closing the shop, the AI-assistant triggered a notification for the tax payment due for this month. The owner was briefly worried that the tax payment amount was unnoticed while making the coffee machine purchase. But immediate AI-assistant replied, “No need to worry”, this tax payment has already been factored into your cash projections for this month. Finally, with more clicks & swipes payroll, vendor payments & other expenses are done.
This story may be imaginary, but the use case clearly points towards a very high possibility for AI technology to assist entrepreneurs to improve their business. Also, its answers the big question – whether these AI technologies can be designed & adopted to help Small business?
As AI technology opens the doors to vast range of data, opportunities are developing to create new insights on a small business’s health. Many small business entrepreneurs do not have a rich sense of their cash flow, sales projections, and when they will get the customers payments, or what percentage of cash needs they may require based on the season or a new contract sign-up. Also, Small businesses owners have low cash buffers, so a little miscalculation, a delayed payment, or rapid growth could cause a deadly cash crunch
How about they had a Business Dashboard that will offer a holistic view of their business – such as cash projections, insight on sales & pricing trends?
How about this Business Dashboard helped them understand all possible credit options they can apply & action to improve their credit ratings?
How about if this Dashboard come with a predictive power of analyzing large data set of business owners in similar industries, that will help the owners to head-off possible trends or threats?
The answer for the above questions: Artificial Intelligence + Machine learning.
Machine learning + Artificial intelligence are the present —not just the future for small businesses owners!!
Author:
Manickavel Muthusamy
Entrepreneur, Co-Founder & CEO
Expert Solution Technologies Canada Inc.
Toronto, Canada
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Bio -Manickavel Muthusamy is the CEO & Co-Founder of Expert Solution Technologies Canada Inc.
An Entrepreneur with in-depth understanding of Sales & Marketing of IT Services, Outsourcing and Global Delivery, worked with leading MNCs in multiple geographies including India, Canada and USA in his career spanning over 22 years. Currently owning a software firm in Canada helping Small & Medium Size business with a wide range of accounting technology solutions & services.
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