By Martin Vilaboy Developing new services for small businesses has always been a challenge for providers of SMB services. Unlike large enterprises, smaller businesses tend to have more specific needs, highly fluctuating budgets and heightened sensitivity to pricing and the perception of value. Rarely, if ever, is a one-sizefits-all approach relevant to this subset of customers. And the stakes of new service development have never been higher. According to a survey of marketing and telecom companies that serve a thousand or more SMB clients, 74 percent of respondents reported plans to increase their spending on AI services development this year. On average, these organization plan to allocate 21 percent of their total annual budgets toward AI development for SMB services, or about $426,000 per company, with almost half of these providers dedicating more than the annual average, show the findings from InTandem. In turn, respondents expect AI tools marketed to their SMB clients to account for about a quarter of their revenue during the next two to three years, but those projections drop to 5 to 10 percent of revenue when projecting five years out, suggesting respondents see something of a short window of opportunity for AI services. “The reason for the eventual decline is that AI will likely be embedded in everyday tools by then, and since it will be a standard feature rather than a differentiator, revenue will need to come from other innovative solutions that meet SMB needs,” argued InTandem executives. Cracking the code of small business new service development Serving SMBs BUYERS SIDE Annual AI SMB Tool Development Spend by Providers $100K - $250K 24% $250K - $500K 46% $500K - $750K 20% $750K - $1M 9% $1M+ 1% Source: InTandem 56 CHANNELVISION | MARCH - APRIL 2025
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTg4Njc=