SFA Survey Finds Shallow AI Adoption Among Small Firms
A Small Firms Association survey published on August 10 found that only 18% of surveyed Irish small businesses had incorporated AI into some or most applicable business areas. The Irish Examiner reports that 92% of firms using or actively investigating AI rely on off-the-shelf tools such as ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, while 30% use customised models. Technical expertise, time and finance were cited as major barriers.
A survey commissioned by Ireland's Small Firms Association (SFA) found that 18% of 404 surveyed small businesses had incorporated AI into some or all applicable business areas. The research, conducted by Amarach Research, describes a wide gap between experimentation with general-purpose AI assistants and deeper deployment of tailored systems.
The Irish Examiner reports that 5% of respondents had incorporated AI across most or all applicable areas, while another 13% had deployed it in some areas. A further 18% were experimenting with AI and 12% were investigating possible uses without deploying it. The SFA defines a small business as employing fewer than 50 people, according to The Irish Times.
Generic tools dominate usage
Among firms using or actively investigating AI, 92% reported using generic, off-the-shelf tools, including OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, according to the Irish Examiner. The same report puts use of customised AI models at 30%, while RTE reports that figure rose from 22% in the prior year's survey.
RTE reports that nearly two-thirds of respondents using specially designed models said those systems improved business efficiency, and almost half said they improved the speed of customer service delivery. Those are self-reported outcomes from a subset of survey participants, rather than independently measured productivity results.
The surveyed businesses most commonly used AI for operational work. The Irish Examiner reports that 63% cited sales and marketing content generation, 63% cited administration, and 37% cited customer-service chatbots. Recruitment and employee retention were reported by 27%, while 26% used AI in product or service development.
Adoption barriers vary by sector
The Irish Times reports that 31% of non-users cited a lack of technical expertise, 28% cited insufficient time to investigate AI, and 17% cited a lack of finance. It also reported that financial and professional services had the highest reported uptake, with 51% using AI for some or most practices, while retail, hospitality and manufacturing had lower adoption.
The Irish Examiner identified particularly high non-investigation rates in retail and hospitality, at 38% and 41%, respectively. Separately, it reported that 11% of all respondents had not started using AI but expected to consider it within six months, 31% had not started looking into it, and 4% had no AI plans or considered it irrelevant.
SFA director David Broderick called for government support through the National Training Fund. "AI has the unmatched potential to dramatically boost productivity and lower overheads, but owners simply do not have the hours in the day, technical staff or finances to figure out how to deploy it strategically," Broderick told RTE.
For AI practitioners building products for small and medium-sized businesses, the survey illustrates a familiar deployment pattern: broad adoption of low-friction copilots can precede integration with proprietary data, workflow systems and specialised models. Comparable transitions generally require not only model access, but also implementation capacity, data governance and evaluation methods that smaller organisations can operate with limited technical staff.
Key Points
- 1Only 18% of surveyed firms had deployed AI, showing that broad awareness has not translated into widespread operational integration.
- 2Generic assistants dominated reported usage, while customised models reached 30%, leaving substantial room for implementation and integration services.
- 3Technical skills, time and funding barriers indicate that SME AI adoption depends on operational capacity as much as model availability.
Scoring Rationale
The survey offers current evidence on how small businesses are moving from generic AI tools toward tailored deployments, a relevant market signal for AI product and implementation teams. Its findings are geographically limited and based on self-reported survey responses, but the barriers it identifies are broadly relevant to SME adoption.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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