What’s the One Thing That Can Make AI Work for Your Business?

Artificial intelligence is everywhere now, but not every business using it is seeing results. The difference often comes down to one thing: using AI for the right tasks. It’s not about having the latest tools or the biggest budget. It’s about knowing exactly where AI fits into your workflow.

Many businesses rush to adopt AI without a clear plan. They try to apply it to everything at once hoping for quick wins but end up with mixed results. The smarter move is to focus AI on high-effort, low-impact tasks. 

These are the things that take up a lot of time but don’t directly affect your product or customer experience. When you automate these, you free up your team to focus on the work that actually moves the business forward.

Where Should You Be Using AI?

Tasks like summarizing reports, analyzing customer data, syncing platforms, or writing simple internal code are good places to start. These kinds of jobs are repetitive and time-consuming, but they don’t require creative thinking. That’s exactly where AI thrives.

This targeted approach is working well for companies like The Gist, a Canadian sports media brand. Instead of replacing writers or content creators, they use AI to streamline back-end operations and better understand their audience. 

It’s not about removing people from the process, it’s about helping them work smarter.

Why Do Some Businesses Still Struggle with AI?

For many mid-sized companies, the challenge isn’t knowing what AI can do, it’s figuring out how to adopt it without wasting time and money. They’re often too small to absorb the costs of failure and too large to change direction quickly. 

On top of that, concerns around legal risks, data privacy, and cybersecurity make adoption more complicated.

The solution is to stay practical. Pick one or two simple use cases. Measure things like time saved or errors reduced. Use the AI tools already built into your existing software. And make sure your team knows how to use them well.

Train people on when to use AI, how to review its output, and where human judgment still matters.

AI will not fix everything overnight, and it’s not meant to replace your team. But when you choose the right tasks, track results, and stay intentional, AI becomes a smart support system, not a distraction.

In the end, making AI work isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters, better.