Copyright scotsman
Research carried out among small business owners by Censuswide for Google revealed that 59 per cent said they have paused “game changing” ideas, because they don’t have time to bring their innovations to life. Small and medium sized enterprise (SME) leaders believe these innovations would increase revenues by an average of 30 per cent. Economic analysis from consultancy firm Public First found that AI-powered tools, such as Google Workspace with Gemini - a suite of apps including Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Docs, Meet and Vids with AI - could boost SME productivity by 20 per cent. This is comparable to adding an extra day to each working week. It added this would play a key role in “supercharging business growth and unlocking a £198 billion boost” for UK SMEs. Google has partnered with the Department for Business and Trade and Royal Bank of Scotland on a nationwide ‘AI Works for Business’ tour to help SMEs use AI to unlock innovation. The tour included an event held recently at the bank’s Gogarburn campus in Edinburgh. It has been developed in response to Google’s ‘AI Works Report’. John Abel, senior technical director, Office of the CTO at Google Cloud, spoke to The Scotsman at the Edinburgh event. He covered the benefits of generative AI - a type of AI that can create new content and ideas, including conversations, stories, images, videos and music. He said: “The biggest difference with generative AI, which is this new form we talk about, is that it’s more for the business user than the technologist.” He added that it’s really important for the UK economy to encourage SMEs to adopt AI as they make up 99 per cent of businesses. In terms of reassuring people that AI is designed to make their lives easier, rather than replace jobs, Abel said: “I use me as an example. I'm very proud of being a British dyslexic Association ambassador. Reading and writing for me is a challenge, and always has been. I specifically use AI and now generative AI to allow me not to have those barriers. “Think of the things that you love to do in your work and focus on that. Let AI or generative AI deal with the things that give your business toil or friction, or that you struggle with.” At the Edinburgh event, Richard Bolingbroke, chief of staff and growth office at Royal Bank of Scotland for commercial and institutional businesses, told attendees that “we are moving very fast and swiftly into the fourth industrial revolution”. “AI is reshaping how we operate as a business. It's influencing how our industries operate, both inside and out. It's influencing what our competitors do, how they do it, how they take products and processes to market,” he explained. “It's already delivering measurable value at scale - be that cost savings, efficiencies, or opportunities to offer better customer experiences.” Emma Jones, the UK Government’s Small Business Commissioner, told the audience that she was looking at how to use AI and other technology to tackle the problem of small businesses not getting paid on time. Jones described herself as being “like the police of payment”. She said: “Our job is essentially to ensure small businesses get paid on time.” She said: “We're looking at whether we can come up with, in the UK, the concept of a prompt payment score. This would be leveraging lots of accounting transaction data. “That would enable you as small businesses to check out what the score is of a respective company before trading with them, and potentially ease your route to credit. It could enable banks to say that if a small business has a good prompt payment score, it’s an indication that it's well run and they will lend to that company.” Google has also launched the “10 Stories” campaign. This highlights 10 SMEs using generative AI through Google Workspace with Gemini. One of those is Loch Insh Outdoor Centre in the Scottish highlands. Owned by the Freshwater family, the business has grown and evolved over the years since it was set-up in 1969 to offer a range of activities from kayaking to archery. It employs around 70 people in peak season. One of the directors, Duncan Freshwater, said the family, including his siblings Jonathan and Andrew, run the business as a “democracy”. He explained that Google Workspace Gemini comes to the fore when recording discussions around decision making. “In the last couple of years we’ve been creating more governance within the business,” he said. “Previously we had people taking minutes at meetings. Now we just press click and we get a transcript. It makes for much more evidence-based decision making with a record of who said what. “We’re rolling it out to our various departments. We’re a restaurant, a hotel, chalets and activities. We need to have senior staff meetings and as we have a diverse clientele our offering changes for different events.” He added that with the business being in a rural area and without the budget to build their own IT system Google Workspace proved an attractive proposition, partly because of the cyber security protection it offers. “Our logistics have improved because we can record our meetings through Gemini and demonstrate governance,” he added. Looking ahead, Freshwater said he will be looking at how Gemini can help with optimising the use of Google Sheets and business forecasting.
