THE AI TOOLS THAT ARE ACTUALLY USEFUL FOR AN SME IN 2026
No list of fifty apps: the five uses that save time for a retailer, a tradesperson or a small business, with what it costs and what it doesn't do.
By Arnaud Poirier, freelance web & software developer, Antibes
- Five useful uses: writing, sorting and summarising, answering customers, producing working visuals, automating between your tools.
- AI knows neither your customer nor your season and does not guarantee what it writes: you always proofread.
- Start with a single repetitive task, measured in minutes per week.
AI does not replace your trade. It replaces the tasks you do with a sigh: answering the same questions, writing, sorting, re-typing. Here is what really works in a small business, tested with my clients.
1. Write and rephrase
Product pages, replies to reviews, follow-up emails, descriptions for Google: an assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Mistral) writes a decent draft in ten seconds. The rule: you proofread, you correct in your own words, you never publish as is. Cost: €20 per month.
2. Sort and summarise
Summarise a contract, extract the figures from a supplier quote, sort incoming emails by urgency. These are one-minute tasks that, repeated a hundred times a week, cost half a day.
3. Answer customers, at night
An assistant on your website that knows your opening hours, prices, lead times, delivery area, and hands over to a human as soon as the question goes off-script. Well set up, it absorbs 60 to 70% of repetitive questions. Badly set up, it makes things up: it must be restricted to your documents only.
4. Produce working visuals
Seasonal banners, illustrations for a post, variations of a packshot on a different background. Not your product photos or your logo, but everything that is disposable and quick. I cover it in detail in Creating visuals with AI.
5. Automate between your tools
This is where the gain is greatest: an order comes in, a quote goes out, a follow-up is sent, an invoice is created in the accounting. AI acts as intelligent glue between programs that did not talk to each other (reading a PDF, extracting an address, a simple decision). That is my job inAI and automation.
What AI does not do
It does not know your customer, your neighbourhood, your season. It does not guarantee the truth of what it writes. It does not replace a photographer for your flagship products or a developer for your business rules. It speeds up someone who knows what they want.
Where to start
A single repetitive task, measured in minutes per week. We automate it in a half-day workshop, we measure the gain, then we move on to the next.
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