As a business leader in Operations for SMEs, my biggest challenge this year is probably (still) figuring out how to truly find efficiencies with AI in our business stack.
There's a lot of potential to free us from the boring tasks (reading and re-reading emails to remember context, manually clicking through to our contract repository to find some terms, ...) to allow us to focus on higher-level items.
I just feel that we're not all there yet.
To your point on asking questions - well, the SME CEOs that I work with aren't asking the deep ones, mostly "how fast can we implement XYZ" in a trend-chasing way instead of truly questioning where it can take us. I have the feeling that lots of SMEs are in that boat as how many are truly setting the pace here? Lots of potential there too.
At the strategic dependency-level, my clients are American so there's no need to worry too much about geopolitics - it's all about ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok. The risks are mostly centered around the changing of models (eg from ChatGPT 4.1 -> 5.0) or pricing (eg new tiers of $200).
Regarding SMEs; I think these are great conversations because SMEs don't have time for BS and the shiny objects; they want results: it forces clarity; although they are more resource constrained.
Happy to discuss further if that's help on how you could approach this with your clients!
Thanks for another very thoughtful piece!
As a business leader in Operations for SMEs, my biggest challenge this year is probably (still) figuring out how to truly find efficiencies with AI in our business stack.
There's a lot of potential to free us from the boring tasks (reading and re-reading emails to remember context, manually clicking through to our contract repository to find some terms, ...) to allow us to focus on higher-level items.
I just feel that we're not all there yet.
To your point on asking questions - well, the SME CEOs that I work with aren't asking the deep ones, mostly "how fast can we implement XYZ" in a trend-chasing way instead of truly questioning where it can take us. I have the feeling that lots of SMEs are in that boat as how many are truly setting the pace here? Lots of potential there too.
At the strategic dependency-level, my clients are American so there's no need to worry too much about geopolitics - it's all about ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok. The risks are mostly centered around the changing of models (eg from ChatGPT 4.1 -> 5.0) or pricing (eg new tiers of $200).
thanks for your thoughtful message Kelvin much appreciated! I shared some thoughts about my past experience with developing an AI strategy at a large FMCG company in Singapore in this article, you might find this useful: https://open.substack.com/pub/damienkopp/p/when-hr-and-technology-co-design?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
Regarding SMEs; I think these are great conversations because SMEs don't have time for BS and the shiny objects; they want results: it forces clarity; although they are more resource constrained.
Happy to discuss further if that's help on how you could approach this with your clients!
You can drop me a note here at:
damien.kopp@rebootup.com