Practical AI tips and tools to help SMEs grow

Before scaling your business, it's essential to ensure your internal operations are built to handle growth. Many SMEs want to grow but end up burning out, losing leads or frustrating their teams because of inefficient systems.

There is no ready-made solution, but in reality, it's all about:

• solving problems

• removing bottlenecks

• building smarter and automated workflows

It's time to digitize!

If you're an SME owner wondering how to stimulate growth and become more cost-efficient, here are 10 things you need to address to make progress:

1. You or your team is drowning in spreadsheets or emails

2. You or your team repeat the same tasks manually

3. Customer data is scattered across different platforms

4. You or your team rely on outdated software

5. You or your team spend more time on admin than growth

6. You’ve outgrown your current systems

7. Customers expect more than you can deliver

8. You can’t track performance or ROI easily, no automated reports available

9. Team collaboration is clunky or disorganized, you don't really know what everyone is doing

10. You know there’s a better way, but don’t know where to start

Recognize yourself in any of these? You’re not alone, and the good news is that digital transformation doesn’t have to be complex or expensive. Start small, but start smart.

Growth slows when teams are misaligned or duplicate work. If collaboration is scattered across emails, chats and documents, consider using centralized tools. When everyone’s on the same page, execution becomes faster and clearer.

It often goes wrong, resulting in lost information, duplicated effort and delayed decisions when relying on endless

• spreadsheets: fiddling with formulas, difficult to collaborate with different stakeholders

• long email threads

=> These tools weren’t built for scale and not to use as a team.

Instead, reduce friction and centralize data, content and communication with a modern

• CRM

• Project management / documentation platform

• Central content publishing platform

Manual work can eat up valuable hours, some examples:

• sending invoices

• payment reminders

• scheduling an appointment

• updating CRM contacts

Automating these repetitive processes not only saves time but also reduces errors. You can use tools like n8n or native app automations to create automated workflows and eliminate this kind of valuable human work time.

When admin eats into time that could be spent selling, innovating, or serving clients, it’s a red flag. Identify the most time-consuming tasks and ask: can this be simplified, delegated, or automated? Admin shouldn’t be the default job description for your leadership team.

When your sales, marketing, and support data live in different systems (even worse in emails and spreadsheets) that don’t talk to each other, not only your internal efficiency suffers but also your customer experience suffers. Integrating these platforms or using a unified system ensures your team has a complete, real-time 360 picture of every customer and his data and communication.

1. Start to audit & map your data sources (Tip: do that with the handy tool Miro to make it very visual)

   • Where is your data stored? (Google Sheets, Notion, CRM, invoicing software, email, cloud storage)

   • What kind of data is it? (customer info, financials, projects, analytics, etc.)

   • Who uses it and how often?

2. Choose your “source of truth”: where most data lives or gets pulled into (CRM)

3. Connect your platforms with integrations, automations and AI “glue” (Zapier, Make, n8n)

Making decisions without data is like flying blind. If you’re not tracking KPIs or ROI consistently, it's time to set up automated reporting systems whether through your CRM, accounting tools, or stand-alone dashboards. Data should flow automatically into those systems and should be easy to act on.

When you solved the problem of the scattered data across different platforms, you can now consolidate data for insights and reporting (CRM, Google Looker Studio)

If you're getting more inquiries, larger deals, or more complex requests but your team is maxed out, that’s a sign of growth readiness and risk. Meeting higher expectations means rethinking your delivery, onboarding, and support with digital solutions that scale without more headcount.

Example:

• Incoming support questions by email:

• Mail automation flows and sequences