An AI Adoption Tool-Kit for Jamaican SME's

When thought proceeds action, outcomes are often improved. A process the JMMB Thought Leadership Breakfast provided an opportunity to explore by encouraging an enterprise centered thought experiment on how SMMES can adapt, compete, and grow.

 

Harold Davis, Acting CEO of the Jamaica Business Development Corporation (JBDC) provided analysis of the adoption gaps that currently exist in Jamaica.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Davis said, “When we started and we did our situation and analysis, it found that only 32% of MSMES were adapting technologies in their daily running of their daily business. And most of that 32% the large majority of it was spent on social media. So, our drive in the last two years with the support of the European Union uh resources is to move that figure to move that figure from 32% and with an ambitious 60 or 70% of our MSME utilising technologies in three years.”

 

Leveraging technology to strengthen operational performance has become non-optional, according to ambassador Duyshant Savadia, CEO of the Amber Group.

 

Savadia  said, “No matter which industry you are in, that industry, how you saw it 5 years ago and even a year ago, will not be the same in the next two years. I'm not even talking about five or 10. If you do not disrupt your own business today by modernizing it quickly, to me uh it's not a choice anymore whether you want to automate or not. The choice is how fast can you get ahead of the cube and start automating different processes inside your business. And if the processes are broken, then fix those processes first before you implement AI.”

 

 As the JBDC acting CEO notes, it's not simply a matter of one-size-fits-all. Davis said as businesses, we need to treat uh technology as an accelerator in its truest sense.

 

“It means that when we embark on that technology kind of transformation, technology introduction type of thing, we should be thinking first of all what problem are we looking to solve? Because when you put an accelerator on something that is seconds fundamentally flawed, then you're accelerating the flaw.”

A consideration that benefits from Ambassador Savia's playbook on technical support to scale sustainably.

 

“The readiness to scale is the most vital thing that every business will have to now look at, and scaling and all of the success around the business is defined by few things. One, is the accessible data. Now Jamaican businesses don't have a data problem. They have a data location problem. First thing to do, is to consolidate all your data.”

 

The Amber Group CEO emphasized that you cannot automate what you can't articulate.

 

“…Writing down how we actually do this surfaces the redundancies and bottlenecks. So, fixing those where most early gains live. So, creating a stable process looking at what is on paper where it is sitting and systematically getting them straight. AI's real power is seeing the whole business at once. So, a single signal flows through inventory to procurement to sales all the way.”

 

And finally, where does that compute stop?

 

Savadia  said, “You must be able to answer who owns the output, who reviews it, what's the escalation path if something goes wrong, who is the human or where is the human accountable. Scaling with AI is as much change management and trust as technology. The honest reframe is don't ask we shouldn't be asking how do we adopt AI. We have to ask are we digitized, documented, integrated and governed? If all these four things are set right, then AI becomes a phenomenal tool to sit on top of this to scale your business.”

 

An enterprise that for many will likely maintain people at its core, which means getting employees on board.

 

He said AI is not going to take anybody's job.

 

“The jobs that will be lost will be only by those who are not willing to adopt AI anymore. That is the future we like it or not.”