Artificial intelligence is moving quickly from an experimental technology into everyday business software.
For many organisations, AI is no longer something employees need to visit a separate website to use. It is increasingly being built into the systems businesses already rely on every day — including Microsoft 365, Outlook, Word, Excel and Teams.
That creates an important question for business owners:
Who should be responsible for AI inside your business?
For many SMEs, your Managed Service Provider (MSP) should be part of the answer.
Traditionally, an MSP might manage your computers, Microsoft 365, email, cybersecurity, networks, backups, phones and cloud services.
AI now touches many of those areas.
Microsoft 365 Copilot, for example, brings AI functionality directly into familiar Microsoft applications. Depending on the licence and configuration, it can work with information across areas such as emails, meetings, chats and files.
That means introducing AI isn't simply a decision about buying another piece of software.
It can also become a technology, security, data management and user training project.
This is where your IT provider can play an important role.
It can be tempting to buy a few AI licences and tell employees to start experimenting.
There is nothing wrong with experimentation, but businesses should understand the risks and opportunities first.
AI doesn't magically fix poor Microsoft 365 permissions.
If an employee already has access to information they shouldn't have access to, introducing AI could potentially make that information easier to find or surface.
Before rolling out AI, businesses should therefore review areas such as:
AI adoption can actually be a useful reason to revisit permissions that may have been left unchecked for years.
Many businesses have accumulated huge amounts of information across Microsoft 365.
Documents can end up spread across SharePoint sites, Teams, OneDrive accounts and shared folders, with unclear ownership and inconsistent organisation.
This isn't necessarily an AI problem — but AI can highlight it.
The better organised your business information is, the easier it becomes to manage access, find information and make useful AI tools available safely.
Before introducing AI, it is worth asking:
Do we actually know where our important business information is?
Giving every employee exactly the same AI tools may not produce the best return on investment.
Different departments have different opportunities.
For example:
Sales teams could use AI to prepare for meetings, summarise conversations and create proposal drafts.
Management teams could use AI to summarise reports, analyse information and identify key actions.
Marketing teams could use AI to support content development and research.
Operations teams could use AI to create procedures, analyse documentation and answer common internal questions.
Your MSP can help identify where AI is most likely to provide measurable value, rather than simply recommending licences for everyone.
One of the easiest ways to waste money on AI is to ask:
"What can we do with AI?"
A better question is:
"Which repetitive tasks are currently taking our employees too much time?"
You might find opportunities in areas such as:
Once you've identified a genuine business problem, AI can be evaluated against it.
The objective isn't to introduce AI everywhere.
It's to save time, improve productivity and make work easier without creating unnecessary risk.
AI is also moving beyond simple question-and-answer chatbots.
AI agents are designed to perform more specialised tasks, use organisational information and support or automate business processes.
Imagine an internal AI assistant that can help employees find:
More advanced agents can potentially interact with other systems and processes.
That means AI agents could eventually become another part of your IT environment, sitting alongside your users, devices, applications and cloud services.
For SMEs, this could create significant opportunities — but it also makes governance and security increasingly important.
AI adoption without basic governance can quickly create problems.
Businesses should consider policies covering:
Your MSP can help implement the technical controls that support these policies, while management and relevant compliance or legal advisers can help determine the wider business requirements.
The important thing is that AI shouldn't become an uncontrolled collection of tools being used differently by different employees.
For Microsoft-based SMEs, AI is increasingly becoming part of the Microsoft 365 environment rather than a completely separate technology project.
That means businesses should be talking to their IT provider about AI now — even if they aren't ready to deploy it yet.
A good IT provider should be able to help you understand what is available, what your environment needs and where AI could genuinely benefit your organisation.
If you're considering AI for your business, ask your IT provider:
If your IT provider can't have that conversation, it may be worth asking whether they are keeping pace with the way business technology is changing.
There's a lot of pressure on businesses to "do something with AI".
But adopting AI simply because competitors are doing it isn't a strategy.
The goal should be to make employees more productive while keeping company and customer information properly protected.
For some businesses, that might initially mean identifying three or four well-defined AI use cases rather than deploying dozens of tools.
Once those processes demonstrate genuine value, AI adoption can expand.
Start small. Prove the value. Then scale.
At 39D, we help SMEs manage Microsoft 365, cybersecurity and business technology.
Our approach to AI is focused on practical business outcomes rather than simply selling licences.
We can help businesses review their Microsoft 365 environment, identify suitable AI opportunities and prepare their technology and users for Microsoft Copilot and future AI tools.
If you're considering AI but aren't sure where to begin, an AI and Microsoft 365 Readiness Review can help identify the opportunities, risks and improvements that should be addressed first.
And the first question we ask isn't:
"Which AI licence do you want?"
It's:
"What problem are you trying to solve?"
That is where a useful AI strategy should begin.
Microsoft offers different levels of Copilot functionality depending on the Microsoft 365 subscription and whether additional Copilot licensing is required.
Potentially. Smaller businesses often have repetitive administrative tasks that AI can help reduce. The key is to focus on genuine business requirements rather than adopting AI for the sake of it.
Yes. Employees need to understand both how to get useful results from AI and what company, customer or confidential information they should and shouldn't use with AI tools.
A Microsoft-focused MSP can assist with areas such as licensing, deployment, permissions, security, governance and user adoption.
Start by reviewing your Microsoft 365 security, user permissions, SharePoint data, licensing and the business processes where AI could provide measurable value.
AI is becoming part of everyday business technology. The businesses that benefit most will be those that adopt it deliberately, securely and with a clear purpose.
