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AWS and S & P Market Intelligence have released the findings of a global survey of SMBs , revealing how data-driven SMBs are adopting AI at twice the rate of their competitors and are financially outperforming . SMBs are on the brink of a breakthrough with AI . However , this report revealed that many are pausing before they take the leap .

MALL- AND MEDIUM-

SIZED businesses ( SMBs ) are engines of innovation , capable of doing a lot with very little , and they ’ re always looking for new ways to gain a competitive edge . In hotly contested markets , the success of any business relies on its ability to differentiate itself . It ’ s why excitement around AI – especially Generative AI – has reached fever pitch .

For SMBs , the pull of Generative AI-powered tools like conversational chatbots and coding companions is strong . The promise of empowered , productive teams , happy customers and continual innovation is enough to attract the interest of any ambitious small business owner . But any AI solution is only going to be as strong as the data quality it ’ s trained on . SMBs that are eager to adopt AI should first consider how to build a mature data foundation , backed by a well-defined data strategy .

Becoming more data-driven is its own reward , delivering organisation-wide benefits beyond the acceleration of AI adoption . Highly data-driven SMBs consistently financially outperform their competitors – and the gap is widening .

A recent study by S & P Market Intelligence , commissioned by Amazon Web Services ( AWS ), revealed just by how much . Here are some of the key findings :

Most highly data-driven SMBs financially outperform their peers

Data helps SMBs remain profitable and cost-efficient in the face of uncertainty , market turbulence and evolving customer expectations . Sixty-five percent of highly data-driven SMBs financially outperform their competitors . That ’ s almost twice as much as less data-driven SMBs ( 33 %).

SMBs that make data a strategic priority gain a competitive edge because they can make decisions based on evidence , not intuition or guesswork . For example , they can anticipate customer needs and deliver more personalised experiences , plan for the future with accurate forecasting and automatically detect security threats .

THE PROMISE OF EMPOWERED , PRODUCTIVE TEAMS , HAPPY CUSTOMERS AND CONTINUAL INNOVATION IS ENOUGH TO ATTRACT THE INTEREST OF ANY AMBITIOUS SMALL BUSINESS OWNER .