Most Irish firms use AI ad hoc

Over half of the Irish small businesses using AI have no set way of using it. Staff open a chat when they remember, ask a question, and start again from nothing the next day.

That comes from an ESRI paper published in April, built on a Department of Finance survey of Irish SMEs. It puts the ad hoc group at 55.5% of the firms using AI. Only about one in six has a formal approach.

Ad hoc use feels productive. You get a good answer now and then, so it seems to be working.

But every answer lives in one chat on one person's laptop, and the business runs exactly the same way the week after.

The fix is to build AI into a job that already happens, so it runs the same way every time and nobody has to remember to open a chat.

I did this first with my client calls. After every call, the recording is transcribed and AI writes up the report for the client. It pulls out everything I promised to do and adds each one to my task list. I don't open a chat or type a prompt for any of it.

You can build the first version of this in three steps.

Pick one job that happens every week, like a client report or a weekly quote.

Write down the steps you follow, in order, in plain English. If a new hire couldn't follow them, AI can't either.

Then give AI those steps as standing instructions it follows every time that job comes up. In Claude, that's called a skill.

Start with one job this week, and write the steps down before you open a chat.