How to digitalise a small business: the order I would follow

> Declaration of interest: BAI Business sells a platform that covers a good part of the steps in this article and publishes it. It is signed by Héctor Redondo, CEO and founder of BAI Business. The order I propose is my opinion, not a fact.

Today I want to talk about how to digitalise a small business without buying blind: in what order I would do it, and when I would skip that order.

The order I would follow is this: first note how you work today; then, your customers in one place; the diary and appointments; invoicing and collecting; your team's tasks and hours; the website and visibility; and, at the end, automation and artificial intelligence. Each step builds on the one before: automating on messy data only multiplies the mess.

Where Spanish companies are

In October 2025 the INE published which technologies companies use (first quarter of 2025):

Technology	Companies with 10 or more employees that use it
Website	84.5%
Social media	69.7%
Enterprise resource planning software (ERP)	63.6%
Paid cloud services	44.3%
Data analytics	41.4%
Customer relationship management software (CRM)	34.5%
Artificial intelligence	21.1%

Those percentages are of companies with an internet connection. Among those with fewer than 10 employees, according to the INE table for that group, 37.0% have a website and 13.4% use artificial intelligence. Among those with 10 or more employees, websites and social media are almost universal and a little over one in three uses a CRM. There is no need to run; what is needed is to put things in order.

The seven steps

1. Note how you work today. A sheet of paper with three columns: what task you do, who does it and how long it takes them in a week. Without this you buy tools for what the salesperson says, not for what takes your time.
2. Your customers in one place. Name, phone number, what they bought from you, what is left to do. While they sit on one person's phone, in another's Excel and in a third's head, nothing that comes after works. I explain it in what a CRM is and when your business needs one and in what an ERP is and when an SME needs one.
3. Diary and appointments. Let whoever wants to come choose a time without calling you. It is one of the changes that shows most: how to set up an online booking system.
4. Invoicing and collecting. Let the invoice come out of the customer file and the payment notice go out by itself. Automating invoicing and collections tells you how, with the payment-terms law.
5. Your team: tasks and hours. Let each person know what is theirs and by when, and let working time be recorded as the law requires (working-time recording). What to look for in project management software helps here.
6. The website and visibility. Let whoever searches for what you do find you and whoever arrives be able to write to you or book. And let you change the website without waiting for anyone: what a CMS is.
7. Automation and artificial intelligence. Now yes. With the data in order and the processes written down, what it means to automate a business and artificial intelligence for small businesses tell you where to go next.

When I would skip the order

• If your problem is collecting, start at step 4. A business that does not get paid on time has a cash problem, not an organisation problem.
• If nobody finds you today, move the website up to step 2. Putting customers in order when you hardly have any has little reach.
• If you work alone, do steps 1, 2 and 4 and leave 5 until you hire.
• If something takes hours every week and it is a single clear problem, solve it first, even if it is not "in its turn".

What to avoid

• Buying everything at once. Every new tool is a new habit for your team. One at a time.
• Several programs that do not talk to each other. Each keeps its own piece of the customer and you end up copying data by hand from one to the other.
• Migrating without cleaning. If you move your Excel as it is, you carry the duplicates and the errors into the new tool.
• Not training the team. If nobody uses it, it is one more expense.

How I know each step works

One question per step, which you must be able to answer in a minute: how many customers do I have and what do I owe them? (2); which appointments do I have tomorrow and how many did not show up last month? (3); which invoices are overdue? (4); what is each person on my team doing today? (5); how many people wrote to me from the website this week? (6). If you cannot, the step is not done.

Imagine an accountancy practice of six people that starts in January. In the first month it notes how it works and gathers its customers in one place. In the second it sets up the diary and collections. In the third it assigns tasks and reviews the working-time record. By the time it reaches automation, it is clear what it repeats each week and what it can leave to a rule. (An invented example, not a real customer.)

What we have built at BAI

I use BAI's platform: the CRM, the catalogue, the receptionist, the tasks, the calendar and the appointments. According to what we publish on our website, each customer has a single file, and the appointment, the invoice and the review come out of that same file; you start with what is most urgent and add the rest without changing system. It is the platform's answer to what I describe above about programs that do not talk to each other. But the order works with any tool: what matters is that the data from one step is what the next one uses.

What to do now

Do step 1 today. When you have it, the second is clear. If you want to see how we do it, there is BAI's platform.

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, published on 22 October 2025), read on 11 October 2026; those for 10 or more employees are percentages of companies with an internet connection. The order of the steps and the cases where I would skip it are my own judgement, not a source. What I say about BAI comes from the published pages of our website and from what I use myself. I wrote it with the help of artificial intelligence from those sources; I sign it myself.

Sources

• INE, "Encuesta sobre el uso de TIC y del comercio electrónico en las empresas. Año 2024 - Primer trimestre 2025. Datos definitivos": https://www.ine.es/dyngs/Prensa/ETICCE20241T2025.htm (accessed on 11 October 2026).
• Description of BAI's platform: published page Platform.