Updated every week · last updated 30 October 2026

AI use cases for small business

What AI actually did for real firms.

Real AI results from firms of 1 to 200 people. Each entry names the firm, the job and the outcome, links to its source, and gives you a prompt to try on your own work, plus a note on what to check.

215
use cases
7
business functions
59
not vendor-written
74
AI agent entries

Showing 215 of 215

Admin and back officeVendor story

Kamloops Surgical Centre

Private surgical centre, Kamloops, British Columbia

When the one transcriptionist who typed every operative report retired, the centre set up Heidi with a custom operative report template in about 90 minutes. For a trial period the administrative assistant ran the same audio through Heidi and compared the output line by line before anything changed.

Result Daily transcription time fell from four hours to 20 minutes.

Not stated (up to 30 physicians use the centre)Canada

Admin and back officeVendor story

Fourways Veterinary Hospital

24 hour veterinary hospital, Johannesburg, South Africa

Vets used Heidi to capture consultations and write the clinical record in a three month pilot from March to May 2026. It also cut the note writing that vets had been doing after hours. A vet reads and approves each note.

Result Documentation time during working hours fell by 25%, from a median of 120 minutes to 90 minutes a day.

25 vets, over 20 nurses and over 30 assistantsSouth Africa

Admin and back officeVendor story

Kennedy White Orthopedic Center

Orthopaedic practice, Florida

Providers use the Heidi AI scribe to record the visit and draft the note, which they check and paste into the records system. Some dictate a full note to it as they would to a human transcriptionist. The team keeps refining templates as billing requirements change.

Result The practice has almost stopped spending about $450,000 a year on nine contracted transcriptionists.

31 providers (15 physicians and 16 physician assistants)US

OperationsVendor story

Alpine Roofing

Roofing contractor, Spokane and Richland, Washington

The co-owner had linked Asana and the Jobber CRM with Zapier for years. He then rebuilt his workflows as Next-Gen Zaps by pointing Claude at his apps. The Zaps copy leads, update job cards, file estimates, send notices and text new leads within a couple of minutes. Zapier agents watch all 14 Next-Gen Zaps and suggest fixes. Claude builds each Zap and he tests it and checks the data lands on the sheet.

Result Inquiry to signed job conversion is up at least 15%. The follow up Zaps catch 10 to 15 leads a month that would have been missed.

About 40 staffUS

Sales and marketingVendor story

Concierge Wealth Management

Two person wealth advisory firm, San Diego, California

The firm built a custom HubSpot agent that looks at several deal properties together, spots stalled client opportunities and suggests the advisor's next step. It also set up Breeze Assistant so the part time caller can look up details such as which meeting link to use and what lifecycle stage a client is in without asking the advisors. Marketing Studio drafts campaign content inside the same system.

Result The firm estimates it saves $70,000 to $90,000 a year across its three businesses without new headcount.

2 staff plus a part time callerUS

Sales and marketingVendor story

RASA

Fast casual restaurant group, five locations, Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia

An AI catering sales agent run as a managed service found catering fit businesses within 30 miles of the five restaurants and named the office manager or assistant who places orders. It contacted lapsed customers after 30, 60 and 90 days, ran email, call and text sequences and answered catering enquiries. It drafted quotes from the catering menu. Kutlerri.ai's team checked each quote, RASA approved it and an invoice with a payment link went out on the same thread.

Result The agent closed $450,000 in new catering revenue in 10 months with no new hires and no paid ads.

Not stated (five locations)US

Sales and marketingVendor story

Major Tom

Digital marketing agency, Vancouver and Toronto, Canada

The agency had about 7,000 dormant contacts from its old sales database and ran about 1,200 of them through HubSpot Prospecting Agent. The agent researched each contact's history with the agency, wrote a first email that referred to it and followed up several times. Replies that were ready to book went to self scheduling links. The sales team handled the replies.

Result In just over three weeks the agent re-engaged more than 1,000 dormant leads and booked 24 meetings. More than $750,000 in proposals followed and one deal of about $200,000 closed.

55 specialistsCanada

Customer serviceVendor storyAI agent

Deddington Health Centre

NHS dispensing GP practice, Oxfordshire

An AI digital receptionist called Jackie answers inbound patient calls with no queue. It takes appointment, sick note and routine care requests and books blood test and screening appointments directly into the booking system. Reception staff work alongside it.

Result Over a 30 day period Jackie handled 2,191 calls, resolved 1,142 end to end and returned 54.2 hours of reception time.

Not stated (12,000 registered patients)UK

FinanceVendor story

Phoenix Malaysia

Accounting and corporate advisory firm, Malaysia

Bookkeeping preparers send client invoices and receipts through Tofu once it has been trained on each client. Tofu reads the documents and posts them to Xero or QuickBooks Online. Staff review the entries. The firm began with a handful of clients and now runs 14 through it.

Result The accounting manager says Tofu saves more than 50% of the bookkeeping time on data entry for well trained client entities.

10 to 12 preparersMalaysia

Sales and marketingVendor story

Rozas Law Firm

Immigration, criminal defence and family law firm, Louisiana

New leads from the website and Meta arrive in the marketing inbox. An AI step in Zapier reads each message and works out the case type. It drafts a first reply with qualifying questions, creates the record in Clio Grow, then sends a text and an email and phones the lead. The intake team is alerted that someone new is ready for follow up. A lawyer still reviews client facing messages.

Result The firm says more than 66 hours of administrative time are saved each month.

34 staffUS

Sales and marketingVendor story

Built 48 Construction Management

Commercial and residential general contractor, Tucson, Arizona

Before the first site visit the owner asks the client for the scope of work and a dozen photos of the property, feeds both into Handoff and gets a preliminary estimate. On a roof job he had two priced options in hand at the walkthrough, a full tear off and a lighter re-roof.

Result Estimate turnaround on larger jobs fell from one to two weeks to the same day, often from the truck.

1 staffUS

Legal and complianceVendor story

Law Offices of J.Chrisp

Personal injury law firm, Northern California

Paralegals upload collision reports and medical records and Supio builds the medical chronology, works out the recoverable medical specials and drafts the demand letter. Its assistant also explains injuries and lists defences the other side might raise.

Result Building the medical chronology, economics tab and demand letter for a case, which could take 80 hours by hand, now takes moments.

Not statedUS

Customer servicePressAI agent

Echo Janitorial Services

Commercial cleaning company, Abbotsford, British Columbia

An AI receptionist in the Jobber job management platform answers the company phone, fielding job inquiries and vendor pitches and passing on only the calls the owner needs to take. Inquiries from the website intake form flow straight into the same platform.

Result The AI receptionist costs $99 a month against roughly $4,000 a month in wages and payroll taxes for a person doing the same job.

Not statedElsewhere

Sales and marketingPress

MCG Homes

Residential remodeller, Fernandina Beach, Florida

The owner built shared Claude projects for estimating, sales qualification, HR and procedure searches. The ballpark estimating tool takes a salesperson description of the scope and property, compares it with past jobs and market data and drafts a budget in the company own cost codes, asking for missing information rather than guessing.

Result Compiling a ballpark remodel budget fell from eight hours to about 30 minutes.

32 staffUS

FinanceVendor storyAI agent

Felix Bloch Erben

Theatre and film rights publisher, Berlin

About 200 royalty statements arrive each week from theatres and other licensees, on paper and digitally and each in a different layout. AI agents built on Make by the publisher office systems supplier, Horn & Görwitz, pull out the data, match the line items and pass them to the publisher own billing system.

Result Processing the weekly royalty statements fell from about two days of one person time to two hours.

Not statedEU

Admin and back officePress

Eiduk Tax & Wealth

CPA and financial planning practice for healthcare professionals, Palatine, Illinois

The founder moved client bookkeeping from QuickBooks to an AI based accounting platform built around its own ledger. Once the system learns a client transaction patterns it reconciles accounts automatically, and he mostly reviews its work instead of processing every entry.

Result Onboarding a new bookkeeping client fell from two to four hours to about one hour.

1 staffUS

HR and peopleSelf-reported

Mosby Building Arts

Design and build remodeller, St. Louis, Missouri

The president uses AI as an assistant to write his monthly 300 word staff newsletter article. He also built a custom Claude project, the Mosby Business Advisor, by answering guided prompts on values, goals, target market and the management team and uploading the employee manual, financials and employee reviews. Each of the 12 managers uses it for advice grounded in the business. A separate set-up checks scopes of work from the 13 salespeople for grammar problems and conflicting information before they go to clients.

Result The monthly staff newsletter article fell from 45 to 60 minutes to five minutes.

135 staffUS

FinanceVendor story

BKB Accountants

Accountancy practice, Poole

Clients send receipts and invoices straight from the Dext app, and Dext AI Assist automates the repetitive bookkeeping steps and suggests corrections, which the team reviews and approves before anything reaches the ledger. The junior bookkeeper also uses it to query transactions instead of searching email chains and spreadsheets.

Result Bookkeeping heavy jobs take around 25% less time, on the practice own estimate.

About 23 staffUK

Sales and marketingCase study

Bracewell Stirling Consulting

Architecture and masterplanning practice, Stirling

Through the Scottish Government funded National AI Adoption Programme, The Data Lab built a prototype tender analysis tool for the practice. Staff upload tender documents and the tool pulls out requirements, deadlines and scoring criteria, flags risks, scores and ranks opportunities, and drafts bid responses from the firm own case studies, with staff reviewing and adjusting the results.

Result Each user saves around 2 hours a week on tender review and preparation.

About 29 staffUK

Legal and complianceVendor storyAI agent

Phillips Law Group

Personal injury law firm, Phoenix

Instead of referring out small personal injury cases, the firm kept them and runs the processing through Supio. Supio Agent rates every incoming injury case, drafts the plaintiff fact sheet and complaint, and runs a scheduled morning brief for the managing partner, while attorneys spend their time talking to clients.

Result A portfolio of 1,400 small cases that used to be referred out now runs on three people, earning 2.7 times the fee a referral paid.

About 105 staffUS

Admin and back officeVendor story

Harley Street Hearing

Audiology clinic, London

Heidi records consultations, including tinnitus therapy and balance assessments of up to three hours, and drafts notes, referral letters and reports in the clinic own templates, which clinicians review. It is linked to the patient management system and can write up sessions held in Portuguese or French in English.

Result Weekly admin and reporting time fell from two or three hours to about half an hour.

Not statedUK

OperationsVendor storyAI agent

Topa Bathroom Products

Bathroom products importer and wholesaler, Netherlands

An AI agent built with Lleverage watches the order inbox, reads orders that arrive as emails, PDFs, CSVs and spreadsheets, and creates the sales order in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. It drafts a reply when a commission number is missing and sends unknown article codes to a person.

Result Over 90% of incoming orders now go into Business Central with no manual input.

Not statedNetherlands

FinancePress

Element Design Build

Design and build remodeler, Hudson, Ohio

The owner uses Claude as the link between the firm software, through MCP connections and a third party JobTread integration layer. On the accounting side an AI agent helps input vendor bills, match purchase orders and budget lines and support reconciliation in JobTread. Claude also turns recorded client calls into draft proposals and pulls job decisions together into final scopes and budgets.

Result Commission calculations that took a full day are now done in under an hour, with an audit trail.

8 staffUS

OperationsVendor story

SCS Advisory

Wealth management firm, Bellevue, Washington

A consultant built a compensation splitting application that runs on the operations lead own Windows PC using local Qwen models, with no cloud and no data leaving the machine. She types a rule change in plain English, the app updates the formula and the written rule together and shows her both to confirm, then runs the quarterly calculation in one click.

Result The firm saves about 200 hours a year on quarterly compensation calculations.

Not statedUS

OperationsVendor storyAI agent

Golden International Corporation

Food importer and distributor, Renton, Washington

A consultant built an order entry agent for the firm using Gemini and n8n. It takes orders sent as handwriting, photos, PDFs or typed documents, reads them, matches each line against the product catalogue of over a thousand items, scores its confidence and sends high confidence orders straight into the old ERP system, flagging the rest for a person.

Result Order entry fell from up to two hours per order to about five minutes.

Not statedUS

Sales and marketingVendor storyAI agent

Retail Trust

Retail wellbeing charity working with more than 200 retailers

CGI built a network of AI agents into the charity's existing Happiness Dashboard. The agents gather material from guidelines, mental health guides, demographic data and retailer feedback, generate tailored campaign content, validate it separately, capture feedback and log every output for human review.

Result CGI reports that the campaign work now needs 80% less manual effort.

About 127 staffUK