90% of making AI work isn't the AI

Ninety percent of getting AI to work in your business has nothing to do with the AI.

That's Boston Consulting Group's 10-20-70 rule. Ten percent of the effort goes on the AI itself, twenty on the technology and data underneath it, and seventy on people and the way the work gets done.

In small businesses I see it the other way round, with most of the effort spent picking a tool.

When something is broken, the cause sits in the process, the data, people's skills, or management. AI helps a lot with the first two and very little with the last two. Management is the one I see most.

In my first business, the bottleneck was me. Nothing went out until I'd seen it, and I'd never told anyone what they were allowed to decide. No software was going to fix that.

So before you buy anything, write one sentence about the cause of the problem you want AI to fix. "Invoices go out late" is a symptom. "Invoices go out late because only I can sign them off" is a cause.

If the cause is you, the fix costs nothing.