SMEs adopt AI for smarter financial decisions

AI reshapes SME operations as cloud tools go mainstream.

Artificial intelligence is fast becoming an essential part of daily operations for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Asia Pacific, as more companies look to AI for smarter decision-making and faster digital transformation.

“AI is literally a tsunami,” said Amit Suxena, Head of Asia at NetSuite. “This is one of the fastest growing technologies we have ever seen.”

According to him, within two to five years, AI will no longer be optional for SMEs. “We see that SMEs would be having AI as something which is a routine part of their day to day functions,” he said. “You want to have a financial system which is doing your finance for you, your accounting for you. And it is giving some AI predictions.”

Suxena added that AI will increasingly support financial decisions, such as identifying markets with better debt collection potential and avoiding higher-risk regions.

“Keep it simple,” he said. “Don’t buy very complicated systems. Buy something which is off the shelf. Do not customise it too much, and use it in a way that you can actually start using it within the first three months or four months of buying it.”

Suxena recommended that SMEs opt for cloud-based, AI-integrated solutions that support multiple business functions like CRM, HR, or finance. “What SMEs need to do is that they need to buy these solutions which already have AI integrated into it.”
The growing use of AI is also driving cloud adoption. “AI is actually accelerating cloud adoption,” he explained. “If you are somebody who's using an on-premise solution, then all the intelligence the AI can get is basically from your data. AI needs a ton of data for it to be predicting correctly.”

Cloud platforms give AI access to broader datasets, improving accuracy and relevance of suggestions. For example, routine tasks such as account reconciliation are already being automated.

“People are already using AI in productivity,” he said. “What we are slowly seeing is a shift from just improvement in productivity to analytical AI—how AI can study your data and give you active suggestions.”