By David Malan 

Digital transformation has shifted from a corporate luxury to a strategic imperative. Once the domain of multinational giants with expansive budgets and dedicated IT departments, it is now being driven by small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) that are leveraging AI and automation to reshape how they operate and compete. These businesses are not merely adapting, they are architecting a new digital paradigm.

Rather than pursuing sweeping infrastructure overhauls, SMBs are embracing modular, scalable technologies that align with their operational realities. Cloud-based platforms and AI-powered tools are enabling them to streamline workflows and respond to market shifts in real time. This democratisation of digital capability is levelling the playing field, allowing SMBs to challenge incumbents and disrupt traditional models.

For many SMBs, digital transformation begins with a simple challenge: how to do more with less. AI and automation offer a compelling answer, not only through complex deployments, but through accessible platforms that simplify repetitive tasks and unlock strategic bandwidth. Intelligent systems now handle invoice processing, HR documentation and logistics workflows with speed and precision, freeing teams to focus on creative problem-solving and long-term planning.

One of the most impactful applications is intelligent document processing (IDP), which automates data extraction, validation and routing. In sectors like logistics and healthcare, this translates into faster approvals, reduced errors and improved customer service. For example, a regional logistics firm that automates bill-of-lading workflows can cut administrative overhead, accelerate delivery timelines and reduce disputes – all while enhancing client satisfaction.

These gains are not theoretical. They are quantifiable and repeatable. Processes that once took hours now happen in seconds. Accuracy improves, compliance strengthens and employees spend less time chasing paperwork and more time delivering value. This shift reframes digital transformation from a technical upgrade to a strategic enabler, one that empowers SMBs to operate with greater precision and purpose.

Bridging the physical and digital divide

While cloud-native platforms and AI tools dominate the conversation, many industries still rely on physical documentation. In sectors such as healthcare, legal services and shipping, paper remains a critical part of daily operations. Here, technologies like optical character recognition (OCR) and smart scanners play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between physical and digital workflows.

Digitising paper documents is a foundational task. Without it, even the most advanced AI systems cannot function at full capacity. OCR ensures that data is complete, searchable and ready to fuel automated processes. It also supports regulatory compliance by making records accessible and auditable. This step, often overlooked, is essential for unlocking the full potential of AI-powered transformation.

Moreover, the integration of OCR with AI-driven platforms enables SMBs to build systems that are not only efficient but also adaptive. These systems respond to real-time inputs, adjust workflows dynamically and provide actionable insights that inform strategic decisions. The result is a business environment where physical constraints no longer hinder digital progress and where transformation is truly end-to-end.

The convergence of physical and digital capabilities also enhances customer experience. In industries where documentation is central to service delivery, digitisation allows for faster turnaround, fewer errors and more personalised engagement. SMBs that invest in this bridge between worlds are – simply put – elevating their brand and strengthening client relationships.

From efficiency to intelligence

Forward-looking SMBs are moving beyond basic digitisation toward adaptive intelligence. They’re deploying AI to refine decision-making, personalise customer engagement and dynamically adjust operations. No-code platforms, embedded analytics and AI assistants are designed with SMBs in mind, offering enterprise-grade capabilities without the complexity. This evolution marks a shift from reactive operations to proactive strategy.

Transformation is no longer about replacing outdated systems. It’s about reimagining how work gets done. AI enables businesses to anticipate customer needs, optimise resource allocation and uncover patterns that were previously invisible. Real-time analytics provide clarity in decision-making, while automation ensures consistency and scalability. The result is a smarter organisation that can pivot quickly and confidently.

Importantly, these tools are increasingly accessible. Vendors are building solutions tailored to SMBs’ pace, budget and technical capacity. This accessibility removes barriers to entry and empowers smaller firms to experiment, iterate and scale without the overhead of traditional IT infrastructure. The emphasis shifts from technology adoption to strategic integration, where every tool serves a clear business purpose.

In this context, AI becomes more than a productivity enhancer. It becomes a growth engine. SMBs that embrace this mindset are truly transforming – using data to drive innovation, automation to unlock capacity and intelligence to shape the future of their industries.

Transformation as a continuous journey

Viewing digital transformation as a finite project is a strategic misstep. For SMBs, it must be a continuous journey, one that evolves alongside market dynamics, customer expectations and technological advancements. Success lies in cultivating a culture of experimentation, setting clear objectives and measuring outcomes rigorously.

The most successful SMBs don’t chase technology. They pursue clarity and invest in solutions that are intuitive, scalable and directly tied to business outcomes. Whether it’s accelerating operations, predicting market trends or enhancing customer experiences, AI becomes a strategic ally when deployed with purpose.

In today’s hyper-competitive landscape, digital transformation is existential. AI sits at the heart of this shift, unlocking new levels of insight and engagement. For SMBs willing to embrace this evolution, the rewards are tangible: accelerated growth, smarter operations and stronger customer relationships. Ultimately, success is no longer defined by size or resources. It’s defined by adaptability and the courage to innovate continuously. SMBs that embody these traits are leading the charge in a digital-first world.

About the Author

David Malan is the Sales Director for DocuWare, overseeing sales, pre-sales and marketing activities across the United Kingdom and Ireland. With over 18 years of experience in Document Management, David has focused on DocuWare’s Electronic Content Management (ECM) solutions since 2012. Throughout his career, David has developed extensive expertise in business process optimisation, helping organisations improve efficiency and reduce costs by implementing content and document management solutions that streamline operations.

By Nick Kabrel

Employees increasingly adopt conversational chatbots at the workplace. Yet without strategic oversight, such usage might default to shallow, efficiency-driven usage, undermining the opportunities for personal and organizational growth. Therefore, leaders should intentionally shape an AI use culture that facilitates human flourishing and organizational innovation. Here’s how to achieve it.

Introduction

The rise of advanced AI, and conversational chatbots in particular, has created an urgent leadership challenge that most executives are overlooking. How your employees use chatbots isn’t just their individual choice – it has broader organizational implications. Collective chatbot usage patterns are shaping what I call an organizational “AI use culture.”

Because chatbots are cheap, fast, and accessible, many employees adopt them independently to accomplish work tasks. This means AI use culture will emerge whether you intentionally shape it or not. The key difference is that by intentionally guiding it, you can define how it unfolds. If you ignore it, the culture will likely default to shallow, efficiency-driven uses, like obtaining ready-made ideas, copy-pasting drafts, and outsourcing critical thinking. These approaches feel productive in the moment but gradually undermine the learning and creativity of employees that drive long-term organizational growth.

To avoid this prospect, organizational leaders should actively cultivate a more human-centered AI use culture that balances efficiency with learning, creativity, and collaboration.

Shaping effective AI use culture: A practical guide

Human-centered AI use at the workplace means that chatbots are used in ways that enhance key human flourishing factors and facilitate the fulfillment of professional needs, not undermine them. This doesn’t mean chatbots should be avoided or prohibited. Instead, it requires a shared understanding of how AI should be used and why those choices matter.

As a leader, you can’t afford silence when it comes to chatbots. Your employees are probably already using them, the only question is how exactly. Acknowledge this reality explicitly, and if possible, conduct interviews or cross-department surveys to reveal the general chatbot use patterns. Based on the obtained insights, you will clearly see whether the tendencies for chatbot usage are aligned with human development or are simply outsourcing strategies.

For example, looking at the data, you can ask yourself: Are these usage patterns aligned with a need for professional growth? Does this contribute to skill development? Does this enhance mastery, autonomy, and creativity of employees? If everyone in the company uses chatbots like this, will we have a strong human potential and innovation over the long term? If you find any red flags, it can be a sign to intervene with the following strategies.

1. Establish the “sandwich approach”

One of the most effective methods for preserving human agency while leveraging AI capabilities is what can be called the “chatbot sandwich rule.” Within this method, an employee generates “raw material” first, that is, writing a draft, developing initial ideas, creating a presentation structure, designing a pipeline, whatever their work requires (the bottom layer). Then they use a chatbot for feedback, critical evaluation, and reflection on their ideas (the middle layer). Finally, they rewrite or redesign based on that feedback (the top layer).

For example, before presenting an idea to a project leader, an employee might run through several rounds of critical revision with a chatbot, using it to identify weaknesses, explore alternatives, and strengthen their argument. This approach preserves learning and authenticity while potentially saving time and improving quality.

2. Position AI as an intellectual sparring partner

Instead of asking “Write this for me,” employees should learn to prompt chatbots with “Challenge this idea,” “What am I missing here?” or “How could this approach fail?” Chatbots excel as question-askers and can help employees get to the right answers on their own, thereby learning the pathway to a solution and solving it independently next time. Encourage employees to use chatbots as sparring partners or performance coaches that help define goals, challenge assumptions, and evaluate ideas from multiple angles. This transforms AI from a content-generation tool into a thinking enhancement tool.

3. Develop AI literacy as a core competency

Your employees need skills to evaluate AI outputs critically, understanding potential biases, limitations, and gaps. Train them to ask probing questions: What assumptions are built into this analysis? Where might this information be incomplete? How does this align with our specific organizational context?

4. Balance AI and human collaboration

Some of the best organizational thinking emerges from human discussions where different perspectives result in unexpected connections. Regular human check-ins serve multiple purposes: they reality-test AI-assisted work, ensuring it remains grounded in practical constraints. They bring contextual knowledge, emotional intelligence, and diverse experience that AI cannot replicate. And they challenge assumptions based on real-world implementation experience and insights rooted in organizational culture and politics.

5. Avoid AI creativity trap

To complete this guide: here’s something that every executive should reflect on: if your employees use chatbots the same way as your competitors’ employees, which basically means generic question-answer sessions, quick rewrites, standard brainstorming, how likely is it that your company will be much more creative to innovate your way past competitors?

Research suggests that when organizations rely on similar AI strategies, their outputs might begin to converge toward similar ideas and structures. This convergence isn’t immediately obvious because each company’s outputs appear unique in isolation. But zoom out, and you’ll see troubling patterns of similarity.

Therefore, you should promote non-conventional, creative chatbot use cases. For example, train your project managers to use chatbots as a harsh critic, systematically exploring how initiatives could fail before they launch. Encourage your training departments to use AI as a “learning coach,” helping employees create personalized development pathways. Or ask your HR managers to analyse qualitative survey data with chatbots to reveal implicit information they might be overlooking.

Final thoughts

Your organization’s AI use culture is forming right now, shaped by hundreds of daily interactions between your employees and chatbots. You can either let this happen by default, risking a workforce that becomes dependent rather than empowered, or you can actively cultivate an approach that enhances human capabilities while leveraging AI’s strengths.

The choice you make will determine how adaptive, creative, and innovative it remains as AI continues evolving. In a world where everyone has access to the same powerful AI tools, your competitive advantage won’t come from the technology itself. Rather, it will come from how thoughtfully your people use it.

About the Author

Nick Kabrel is a research associate at the University of Zurich and a Digital Society Initiative Excellence Fellow. His research focuses on organizational behavior and human-centered AI at the workplace.

The death of human creativity is coming, and it is coming from the ever-present threat of AI. At least, that seems to be the opinion of the CEO of Amazon-backed AI company Fable, who are behind the restoration of missing footage from the 1942 Orson Welles movie, The Magnificent Ambersons.

Edward Saatchi made an appearance on Squawk Box on CNBC last week, an interview that helped promote his company’s involvement in completing an 80-year-old movie that has been missing a large section of its story for many years. While this is a wonderful thing, and in many ways simply the next stage in the evolution of movie restoration, Saatchi seems happy to believe that AI will go well beyond just helping to revive lost and damaged movies of the past and will instead become as much of a creative force as humans. He said:

“What’s coming is a world where we’re not the only creative species, and that we will enjoy entertainment created by AIs. So, we wanted to train our AI on the greatest storyteller of the past 200 years, Orson Welles.”

Saatchi went on to envision a world where “a movie would come out on a Friday, with [an AI model] alongside it, day-and-date.” This, he enthused, would allow fans to generate additional content based on the movie, and by the end of opening weekend “there are millions of new scenes.” Yes, because that sounds like exactly what the world needs.

According to the CEO, who is not exactly likely to dumb down the purpose of his company, the idea of making “enormous amounts of money” from AI is something that studios and stakeholders are “starting to come around to” after rejecting it as little as a year ago. In his excitement for all of this money-making, potentially at the expense of actual human interaction with the creative process, Saatchi declared that the whole belief in computers being capable of generating original work would be “something Warhol would have found very exciting, DaVinci. The idea that AI can be creative and that you can create a work of art that creates more works of art is really exciting.”

AI Is Back at the Hearts of Several Lawsuits

Although Fable CEO Edward Saatchi is ready to revolutionize the world with AI, seemingly whatever the cost, the idea of anyone being able to create additional scenes for a movie is filled with so many potential pitfalls that it is impossible to comprehend the issues that could come about with such a thing becoming reality. Currently, AI is already caught up in several lawsuits linked to copyright infringement.

Anthropic AI, a company that specializes in generative AI, recently agreed to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit with a group of authors to the tune of $1.5 billion. In the last few days, Warner Bros. has joined Disney and Universal in filing a case against Midjourney, claiming the company has recently eliminated “guardrails” that previously prevented the platform from generating videos and images that use trademarked and copyrighted characters including Superman, Tom & Jerry, and several Looney Tunes characters. Today, Apple has found itself caught in the same web, with the tech giant being accused of using pirated versions of copyrighted novels and books to train its LLM, OpenELM.

Despite all these lawsuits, along with the scrutiny on AI content use in Hollywood from unions, it seems that those heading up AI companies only have their eyes on one thing, and it isn’t how their technology will impact the people currently making a living in the creative side of filmmaking and writing. For regular people, sitting in their bedrooms with no money and without the talent to render their ideas themselves, AI can hand them the world, but for studios, it can only hand them a way of cutting costs and increasing profits.