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AI for small businesses: what it brings and where to start

What AI brings to a small business and what it does not, how many companies use it per Spain's INE, what the EU Regulation requires and how to start.

Héctor Redondo, CEO and founder of BAI Business CEO and founder of BAI Business

Published on Reviewed on 7 min Automation

Contents
  1. How many companies use it
  2. What it gives you today
  3. What it does not give you
  4. Where to start
  5. What the European AI Regulation says
  6. What we have built at BAI
  7. What to do now
  8. How we checked this
  9. Sources

> Declaration of interest: BAI Business offers an AI assistant and an AI receptionist, and publishes this article. It is signed by Héctor Redondo, CEO and founder of BAI Business. This is not legal advice.

Today I want to talk about artificial intelligence in a small business: what it gives you today, what it does not and where to start without being carried away by what you see on social media.

Artificial intelligence gives you, today, time saved on tasks with language and data that you repeat a lot: drafting texts, answering the usual questions, searching your own data. It does not replace your judgement or fix a messy process. Start with one specific task, with a person who reviews the result, and measure the time before and after.

How many companies use it

According to the INE survey on the use of ICT in companies (first quarter of 2025, published on 22 October 2025):

Group Uses artificial intelligence Change on the previous year
Companies with 10 or more employees 21.1% 8.7 points more
Of which, services 25.7%
Of which, industry 17.5%
Of which, construction 11.4%
Companies with fewer than 10 employees 13.4% 5.9 points more

These are the latest data I have been able to consult. The note does not detail what they use it for. The figures imply that almost eight in ten companies with 10 or more employees still do not use it: you are not late, and that others use it is no reason to start for the sake of starting.

What it gives you today

  • Drafts of text: an email, the description of a service, a post. Always reviewed before they go out.
  • Answering what repeats: opening hours, service area, how to book. With your business's data, not the internet's.
  • Searching and summarising your own data: which customers have gone a week without a reply, what a contract says, what was discussed on a call.
  • Filling in data from a document: from the text of a receipt to the date, amount and category.

What it does not give you

  • It does not decide for you. It proposes; the judgement on whether a customer deserves a discount or an extended term is yours.
  • It does not fix a process that does not exist. If each person on your team does a task their own way, artificial intelligence reproduces the mess faster.
  • It does not know what you do not give it. A generative model predicts the most likely words, it does not look up facts, so it can write something false with great confidence. Google says so and asks you to check the facts of everything an AI generates before publishing it.
  • It does not save by default. If nobody measures how long it took before, you will not know whether you save.

Where to start

  1. Choose a task that you do several times a week and with a clear input: answering the same five questions, writing the follow-up after a visit.
  2. Note how it is done today and how long it takes. That is your starting line.
  3. Let artificial intelligence draft and a person approve before it reaches the customer.
  4. Use your data in a controlled place. Do not paste a customer's contract into a free chat without knowing where that text ends up. It is a data protection matter; in data security for your business in the cloud you have the questions to ask the provider.
  5. Measure after two weeks and decide: continue, adjust or drop it. Dropping it is also a result.

Imagine a joinery of four people that receives about fifteen enquiries a week by WhatsApp, half of them asking the same: opening hours, delivery area and lead times. The task is to answer those questions. The starting line is how much time the foreman spends on it each day. One person reviews the answers for two weeks and, if they are correct, lets them go out by themselves with a clear rule for when they pass to a person. (An invented example, not a real customer.)

If what you need is for something to be done the same way every time, perhaps you do not need artificial intelligence but a rule. I explain it in artificial intelligence or automation: which to use and when.

What the European AI Regulation says

Three things that affect you, with their dates:

  • Telling people it is an AI. Whoever talks to an AI system must be informed of it, unless it is obvious from the context (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, article 50, paragraph 1). It applies from 2 August 2026. I cover it in more detail in what a customer service chatbot is.
  • Training your team. Article 4 was rewritten by Regulation (EU) 2026/1744, published on 24 July 2026: whoever deploys AI systems must take measures to support the AI literacy of their staff, without being required to guarantee a specific level for anyone, and the Commission and the Member States will support SMEs in doing so. In practice: written rules of use (what data can be passed to the tool, who reviews and what is never automated).
  • AI to decide about people. If one day you use AI to select candidates or assess your staff's performance, the Regulation treats it as high risk (Annex III) and its obligations have been postponed until 2 December 2027. If that is your case, consult a lawyer.

What we have built at BAI

According to what we publish on our website, BAI's AI assistant answers with your business's data (your customers, your products, your hours and the documents you choose) and carries out tasks such as adding a customer or moving a sale to another stage, but before changing anything it shows you what it will do and waits for your confirmation; if nobody confirms, it expires. You set, from 1 to 10, how closely it must stick to your documents, and you can switch off your business's artificial intelligence with a switch. It works only for your team: the one who deals with your customers is another, the receptionist, which according to our website says it is an artificial intelligence from the first message and asks permission before saving data or booking. I use BAI's receptionist.

What to do now

Write on a piece of paper the task you repeat most often in a week and how long it takes. That is already the first step. If you want to see how we do it, there is the AI assistant. And if you want to start with the basics, what it means to automate a business and where to start gives you the method.

How we checked this

The figures are from the INE press release on the survey on the use of ICT and e-commerce in companies (year 2024, first quarter of 2025), read on 11 October 2026; I have not found a more recent edition. The texts of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 and Regulation (EU) 2026/1744 are those of EUR-Lex, read on 11 October 2026; the second does not modify article 50, paragraph 1. What Google says about AI-generated content is the Google Search Central help page, consulted on 10 October 2026. What I say about BAI comes from the published pages of our website. I wrote it with the help of artificial intelligence from those sources; I sign it myself.

Sources

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