Small and medium sized businesses often struggle with data driven decision making do to a lack of advanced analytics tools, especially in African countries where they make up a majority of the workforce. Though many tools exist they are not designed to fit into the ways of working of SMB workers who are mobile first, have limited time to learn new workflows, and for whom social and business are tightly coupled. To address this, the Dukawalla prototype was created. This intelligent assistant bridges the gap between raw business data, and actionable insights by leveraging voice interaction and the power of generative AI. Dukawalla provides an intuitive way for business owners to interact with their data, aiding in informed decision making. This paper examines Dukawalla's deployment across SMBs in Nairobi, focusing on their experiences using this voice based assistant to streamline data collection and provide business insights

Trending market patterns, growing consumer demands, and establishing a competitive edge against the big businesses in the market has always been a challenge for small businesses (SMBs). With the economy trying to recover from the recent pandemic-driven recession, SMBs are predicted to foresee higher challenges up ahead. According to a recent report by ZDNet, "Small business tech outlook: Here are the challenges and opportunities ahead", inflation increased by 2.47% worldwide and is posing a challenging for SMBs. As a result, small businesses are scrambling to up their game by offering unique customer services, improved customer relations, and increased operational efficiency. Choosing the right software or a technology solution is crucial with many vendors out in the market, offering more or less the same features.

Check out the on-demand sessions from the Low-Code/No-Code Summit to learn how to successfully innovate and achieve efficiency by upskilling and scaling citizen developers. Three things are certain in life: death, taxes and artificial intelligence (AI). Not only is AI significantly less depressing than the other two, it's also produced a number of business innovations and is becoming more affordable as a mass solution. In the startup space, AI has helped predict Covid variant trends, power military tools, and prevent burnout among doctors. Beyond the "sexier" applications of AI, the tech has boomed in a sector that quite literally drives daily life: logistics.

Low code development is getting a lot of traction. Low code platform development provides a more accessible (and typically a graphical) interface for developing applications. Low-code development platforms are philosophically similar to the rapid application development tools of the 1990s and early 2000s. Low code development has many benefits, including possible reduction of development time. I believe low-code AI development platforms could be particularly suitable for SMEs.

Cyber-attacks are a big business, as highlighted by recent headlines of ransomware attacks on the Colonial Pipeline and on the Taiwanese computer manufacturer Acer, which allegedly paid a ransom of £50 million. According to Harvard Business Review, the total amount of ransom companies paid to hackers grew by 300% over the period of last 12 months – and high-profile victims of cyberattacks are now forking out millions to survive. It's easy to see why small and medium businesses (SMBs) may feel that cyberattacks are reserved for large enterprises with sky-high revenues – but this assumption comes at a cost. With 49% of SMBs impacted each month by cyber-attacks, it's clear all organisations are targets for cyber criminals. Cyberattacks have evolved in complexity amid the challenges of managing remote or hybrid workforces, meaning it's now crucial that businesses improve their understanding of cybersecurity and invest in strong backup and disaster recovery solutions.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly making its way into the small-and-medium business (SMB) layer of the economy, with the same promises and pitfalls that it has brought to large organizations. Both on the cloud and in the traditional data center, new services and software releases are bringing advanced AI tools to the less-than-mighty in low-cost, easy-to-use formats that don't require rare and expensive skillsets to operate. While these tools provide the capability to push numerous SMB processes into the fast lane, offering a lifeline to businesses that need all the help they can get when competing against the giants of ecommerce, they're still like any other technology: there is a right way to use them and a wrong way. But with developments happening so quickly and AI's use case for SMBs still unclear, how can small business owners choose the platforms with the highest potential? And how easy will it be to change direction if need be?

Most businesses don't understand the idea of AI technology. Artificial intelligence is evolving, changing what ordinary people can do every day. From small businesses to large Fortune 500 companies, AI is not simply a fancy lab experiment anymore. AI is here, making the playing field fairer for SMBs. Artificial intelligence tech has the power to replace dozens of human resources and replicate what used to be legions of people doing the same time.

Be it artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, or machine learning, all these new-age technologies have been helping small and medium businesses …

Over the last 30 years, large enterprises have reaped significant economic benefits from consolidating their data and workflows into customized enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems created by large, global software companies like Oracle and SAP. However, the price of customized ERP systems remains high ($100,000s to $1M) making them unaffordable for many small and midsize businesses (SMBs), especially those with less than 200 employees. As a result, SMBs miss out on the substantial economic gains and business advantages that customized ERP systems provide. Their performance is hindered by off-the-shelf or poorly customized software tools that do not meet their specific needs. The main cost driver of a customized ERP system is the customization itself.

The banking software company is teaming up with Canadian Western Bank (CWB) to provide its new Temenos Virtual COO solution to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The product is built on top of Temenos' omnichannel digital banking platform and utilizes explainable AI (XAI) and analytics to support financial decision-making at SMBs. By aggregating banking and business data, SMBs are able to assess their current and projected financial health through the use of XAI-powered models that simulate different business scenarios. Banks could utilize XAI technology to rectify the black box problem associated with traditional AI models used in banking. While a powerful tool in terms of generating financial insights, banks should use XAI to complement their existing interactions with customers--not replace them.