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Every day, business owners encounter large and small decisions that could significantly influence their company’s health and growth. Having the right tools and technology can be just as crucial as building a strong team, particularly as more resources become accessible to businesses of all sizes. That’s one reason AI adoption is climbing fast.
According to new research from Intuit QuickBooks, 68% of small businesses now use AI regularly, and most (74%) say it’s helping them accomplish more with less. Unpacking how AI can help your business in meaningful ways starts with understanding what it can do for you efficiently.
What’s the difference between generative and agentic AI?
GenAI has become one of the most familiar and accessible technologies in recent years, built into everything from search engines to accounting platforms. Today, 56% of small businesses using AI rely on these generative tools. GenAI excels at automating content creation: summarizing, translating and drafting responses, which helps business owners stay responsive, make faster decisions and reduce manual work.
However, even greater value can be achieved by layering in agentic AI, although only 9% of businesses currently utilize it. Unlike GenAI, agentic AI takes action on your behalf. These AI agents are context-aware, meaning they can handle multi-step processes and explain their reasoning behind decisions, drawing on past data to provide business owners with clarity and control.
In short, while GenAI helps you create, agentic AI helps you execute. Used together, they empower small businesses to achieve more with less. Among businesses using AI, 41% say their revenue has increased, and 86% consider their business in good health.
So, how can businesses best leverage AI tools? Here are five areas where businesses can infuse AI into their workflows.
Related: How AI Is Leveling the Playing Field For Small Businesses to Compete With Industry Giants
Marketing
In the next three months, 47% of small businesses say nothing would help them more than a successful marketing campaign. It’s no wonder 43% are already using AI to sharpen their marketing efforts. GenAI can create copy and images for social posts, email campaigns and digital ads. Let agentic AI manage audience delivery based on customer behavior, run A/B testing and track results.
How to get started: Start small by leveraging GenAI features in the tools you already use, such as social media scheduling. For your next marketing campaign, consider using agentic AI to experiment with email subject lines, optimize send times or segment audiences based on purchase behavior or engagement history. The key is to test and learn what resonates most with your audience. To go a step further, use a marketing platform that can analyze your customer communications and create unique campaigns based on their interaction with your product or service.
Customer service
Thirty-six percent of small businesses already use AI for customer service. Among them, 74% report higher productivity, and 24% have actually shortened their workdays. That’s time you can put back into your business. GenAI uses natural language capabilities to generate replies and power chatbots based on user prompts. While agentic tools can respond to customers as well, they go further with their ability to autonomously plan, reason, and take actions to resolve customer issues, such as routing requests, flagging urgent communications, tracking follow-ups and even making changes to customer records without human intervention.
How to get started: Try creating a library of automated templates for your most common questions first. Once you’re comfortable, test agentic features that can prioritize or escalate requests for you.
Admin and operations
GenAI can quickly summarize meeting notes, write reminders and create checklists, reducing everyday friction. Meanwhile, agentic AI can multiply administrative efficiency through automated actions. After a client call, for instance, it can create follow-up actions, schedule meetings, log notes into your CRM or assign tasks after a call — no manual effort required. Roughly a third (33%) of small businesses are using AI to handle administrative tasks, often through tools they already rely on.
How to get started: Simply turn on AI features in your calendar, email or project management apps. Then, explore ways to connect these tools for even smoother workflows.
Data and insights
AI is changing the way small businesses understand their numbers. GenAI is well-suited for summarizing reports, spotting trends and quickly answering “what happened?” within a business. Agentic AI drives tasks like forecasting future trends, alerting you to anomalies and connecting real-time data to your planning tools. Today, 32% of small businesses use AI to help make sense of their data.
How to get started: Ditch the spreadsheets and input your business performance data into an AI-powered software to get a clear baseline of your business health. Try AI-powered dashboards that notify you when key metrics shift, so you can stay ahead of the curve. This can help you with automating business reports, but can go as far as even helping you predict changes in cash flow.
Related: AI Can Turn Your Raw Data into Actionable Insights and Visual Stories
Bookkeeping and finance
The survey also found that 29% of small businesses use AI for bookkeeping, and 15% adopted it based on a recommendation from an accountant or consultant. With GenAI, business owners can automatically categorize transactions and track cash flow, so nothing slips through the cracks. To streamline workflows even further, agentic AI capabilities can automate account reconciliations, flag irregular transactions and send personalized invoices tailored to clients, helping businesses get paid faster.
How to get started: Look for a connected AI-powered platform that unifies your business data, automates accounting tasks and proactively delivers insights and recommendations, so you can spend less time on manual work and focus on growing your business with confidence. And, if you are using an accountant, pairing the power of AI with human expertise will lead to a clearer view into your finances.
AI is already helping small businesses work smarter, but business growth comes from using it with purpose. Generative and agentic tools each play a role, and when combined with your expertise, they can support better decisions, faster follow-through and stronger operations. If you’re one of the 1 in 4 small businesses not yet utilizing AI, here’s my advice: start in one area, build from there and keep moving forward.