AI is already becoming part of everyday business for many Australian SMEs.
New NAB research found 40% of SMEs were using AI in the first quarter of 2026, while another 13% planned to adopt it. Among businesses already using AI, 22% reported significant improvements to their operations.
But for most business owners, the useful question isn’t whether AI is going to transform business.
It’s much simpler: where can it save you time right now?
NAB’s research provides a few clues.
Productivity was the most commonly reported benefit of AI, nominated by 58% of SMEs using it. Marketing followed at 46% and customer service at 36%. By comparison, just 9% said profitability was one of the areas benefiting most and 7% nominated revenue.
In other words, the benefits are showing up first in the day-to-day running of the business.
Start with the jobs that keep repeating
AI tends to be most useful when you’re doing the same type of task again and again.
That might mean preparing similar documents, processing information, responding to routine enquiries or turning existing information into a first draft.
Some practical examples include:
- Drafting documents. AI can help prepare the first version of a proposal, quote, letter, meeting summary or internal document. You still need to check and finalise it, but you don’t have to start from a blank page.
- Reducing administration. Some tools can help with repetitive jobs such as extracting information from documents, processing invoices, categorising information or moving data between systems.
- Handling routine customer communication. AI can help prepare responses to common questions, summarise long email chains or draft follow-up messages.
- Finding information faster. Instead of manually working through lengthy documents or notes, AI can help summarise information or pull out the points you need.
NAB found business services firms were seeing particularly strong results from AI, noting that information-heavy businesses can use it for repeatable tasks such as document processing, analysis and administrative automation.
Don’t start with your hardest job
There’s a temptation to look for one big AI system that will suddenly make the whole business more efficient.
For most SMEs, a smaller starting point is likely to be more useful.
Think about where your team is currently losing time.
- Is someone spending two hours every Friday compiling information that already exists elsewhere?
- Are you repeatedly writing similar customer emails?
- Does preparing a quote involve copying the same information between several systems?
- Are staff spending time summarising documents before they can actually act on them?
Those are the kinds of processes worth looking at first.
The aim isn’t necessarily to remove the task entirely. Cutting a 30-minute job to 10 minutes can add up quickly when it happens several times a week.
Keep people involved
AI can speed up a process, but that doesn’t mean you should hand the whole process over to it.
Anything involving judgement, important financial information, confidential information or communication with customers should still have appropriate human oversight.
AI tools can also make mistakes or produce information that sounds convincing but isn’t correct.
So the more important the output, the more important the review process becomes.
Businesses also need to understand how the tools they use handle their data before entering sensitive business, employee or customer information.
Measure whether it’s actually helping
One of the more interesting findings from NAB’s research is the gap between AI use and AI readiness.
SMEs rated their workforce’s preparedness for AI at an average of just 3.8 out of 10, while only 17% considered their workforce highly prepared.
So rather than introducing AI across the business at once, it may make sense to test it on one defined process.
Pick a task. Measure roughly how long it takes now. Trial the tool for a few weeks and compare the result.
If it saves meaningful time without creating extra problems, you have something worth building on.
The bottom line
AI doesn’t have to transform your business to be useful.
For many SMEs, the immediate opportunity is much more practical – shaving time off repetitive work, reducing administration and helping staff get through routine tasks faster.
Those individual savings may seem small. But saving 10 minutes here, half an hour there and several hours on a monthly process can eventually create meaningful extra capacity across the business.
And that is probably a better measure of AI’s value than simply being able to say your business is using it.