Friday, I attended The Midlands Business Network expo at Aston Villa’s Trinity Road stand. Amidst the networking and business cards, I attended two seminars that perfectly framed the current dilemma facing business leaders.
We often talk about “AI” as one big thing. But listening to Todd from Spaghetti Agency and Matthew Higgins Microsoft AI Business Solutions Ambassador with Pax8 Urban Network team, it became clear that for business leaders, AI fights on two distinct fronts: External Visibility and Internal Productivity.
Here is a breakdown of the insights from the expo and what they mean for your business strategy.
Front 1: The Visibility Crisis (Marketing)
Todd opened with a stark reality check: “If you aren’t in the AI summary, you don’t exist.”
We are witnessing the death of the traditional Google Search result page. Google is rolling out AI Overviews (SGE), which scrape content and present a summary answer to the user. This means users are clicking through to websites less and less.
Key Takeaways for Leaders:
- The “Zero-Click” World: Traffic to websites is dropping because AI answers the question immediately. If your content doesn’t feed that AI directly, you become invisible.
- Conversational Content is King: People don’t search for “IT Support Birmingham” as much anymore; they ask their phones, “Who is the best IT support company near me for a small business?” Your content needs to answer specific questions in natural language.
- Don’t Replace Yourself: Todd warned against letting AI write all your content. AI is a “guessing engine”—it predicts the next word. It doesn’t have your lived experience. Use AI to structure your thoughts, but keep the human voice.
Front 2: The Productivity Revolution (Operations)
While Spaghetti Agency focused on getting customers to you, Urban Network focused on what happens when you are actually working. Matthew’s session on Microsoft Copilot was a masterclass in operational efficiency.
Matthew cited a Microsoft survey showing that 80% of workers lack the time and energy to complete their work, leading to massive burnout.
Key Takeaways for Leaders:
- The “Intern” Mindset: The speaker used a brilliant analogy. If you ask an intern to “get coffee,” they might bring you a black coffee you hate. If you say, “Get me a pumpkin spice latte with oat milk because I’m tired,” you get what you want. We must train our staff to prompt AI with Context, Goal, and Tone.
- Data Security: A major fear for leaders is data leakage (e.g., uploading company accounts to the public ChatGPT). The benefit of enterprise tools like Copilot is “Enterprise Data Protection”—your business data stays within your tenant and isn’t used to train the public model.
- The Cost of Inaction: With Copilot now available to SMEs for under £15/month, the ROI is undeniable. They mentioned a pilot study where a single employee saved 168 hours of work in a month.
The Verdict
The message from Villa Park was clear. The “wait and see” period for AI is over.
- Externally: We must update our websites to answer questions conversationally, or we will disappear from search results.
- Internally: We must adopt tools like Copilot to automate the drudgery (meeting minutes, email drafting, data analysis) so our teams can focus on high-value work.
AI isn’t coming; it’s here. The question is no longer “Should we use it?” but “How fast can we adapt?”
