Phew! Just when more and more small- and mid-sized Calgary businesses understand and embrace the business efficiency need for AI – along comes agentic AI.
Shop talk for the record: generative AI is a broad concept encompassing technologies that allow computers to perform human-like tasks. Agentic AI is a specific, advanced form of AI that autonomously sets goals, makes decisions and takes actions with minimal human supervision to achieve those goals.
Experts suggest that AI is a set of tools and capabilities, whereas agentic AI is a system designed to act independently, like a proactive assistant rather than a reactive one.
A KPMG survey of 252 Canadian business leaders shows that most organizations, large and small, are investing in AI technology to gain a competitive edge, revolutionize operations, lower costs, increase efficiency and fill critical skills gaps.
“For small businesses in particular, using AI to add capacity to drive growth and productivity are key,” says Calgary’s Stephanie Terrill, Canadian managing partner, Digital and Transformation with KPMG. “AI allows small businesses to automate repetitive tasks and create more capacity for their teams, which are often more resource-constrained than larger multinational organizations.
“In the energy sector as an example, AI can be used to analyze data from sensors on drill bits to predict drilling performance, it can analyze geological data from core samples, and it can help optimize energy consumption in exploration and production facilities. AI can perform these tasks and allow employees to spend more time on higher value work.”
She adds that, “AI tools can also automate repetitive back-office tasks such as bookkeeping, payroll management and inventory control, allowing small business owners to focus on strategic growth. AI can also help detect and prevent fraud in financial transactions, which is particularly important for protecting small businesses that don’t have dedicated fraud or risk departments.”
For various reasons, small business’ transition is often more challenging.
A recent Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) surveys shows that while AI is firmly on the radar of most small firms, adoption is gradual. For some, AI is still more of an experimental add-on than a core operational tool.
“Adoption varies by sector,” notes CFIB research analyst, Alchad Alegbeh. “Content-driven industries such as arts and finance lead in usage, while transportation and hospitality lag behind, often due to narrower applications or tighter profit margins.
“Over the past three years, 23 per cent of SMEs have invested in AI, and 25 per cent plan to do so in the next three years. Businesses are beginning to see AI’s strategic potential for data-driven decision making.
The growing popularity of AI in business doesn’t necessarily suggest that the transition is a cinch.
Terrill highlights one of the biggest challenges for businesses implementing AI is a lack of trust and literacy in the technology, which leads to inadequate investment in workforce training or delays in implementation. “AI is a new technology, and we need policies, guidelines, safeguards and education in order create trust and increase AI literacy in the workforce.
“The second pitfall is all about data. AI systems rely on large volumes of high-quality data, so if a business has poor quality data, that can hinder their ability to deploy AI effectively. Having clean, updated and consistent datasets is critical to implementing AI.”
Despite the efficiencies and complexities, for small business, and for all businesses, AI is a skill.
According to Mohammad Keyhani, associate professor of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the Haskayne School of Business, “Businesses are adopting new generative AI tools and trying to figure out how it can help their business. The functions that benefit most from AI are the ones where the technology creates the most value and has the most available and easy to use tools. Customer service has been one key area where people learned quickly that AI chatbots (text or voice) could quickly automate a lot of the work relatively well.”
The stats and trends show that marketing and sales was the number one function for AI adoption, because so many AI tools are available for producing marketing content and automating sales.
“In some industries it is more useful in support functions (oil and gas, chemicals or power and utilities), and in some industries it is more useful in core functions (software, media, fintech, insurance, banking),” he says.
“Any routine knowledge work that involves relatively easy tasks that are just numerous or tedious for humans can mostly be automated with generative, and a lot of more complex knowledge work that cannot be fully automated can be significantly enhanced and sped up with generative AI.”
Keyhani explains that since generative AI is a general-purpose technology, it is sometimes hard to measure its true impact. Much like organizations measuring the impact of the internet on its business. “It is just there, everywhere, as a foundational layer. AI will become like that too. It will support everything. It can reduce costs, increase revenue and support almost every function, if not automate it.”
Terrill points out that AI can make a business impact in virtually every part of an organization – if implemented effectively. KPMG’s research shows that organizations are using AI to monitor for regulatory and risk compliance, deploying chatbots for customer service, analyzing market trends and competitor data, and in cybersecurity, by monitoring network traffic.
“We’re also seeing AI make a positive impact in the finance functions of many organizations,” she adds. “Our research shows that eight in 10 Canadian organizations are using AI in accounting, financial planning, treasury management and in their tax operations, and nearly 69 per cent are seeing a return on investment from AI in these areas.”
For some small businesses, adopting AI can be a challenge and a speedbump. “There is an unnecessary level of hesitancy and AI phobia among some business leaders,” Mohammad Keyhani notes with empathy and frustration. “Sometimes it seems like they are looking for excuses to avoid something that seems too good to be true. Concerns like data privacy, AI bias and environmental impact are real, but they are widely overblown.
“Unfortunately, when an organization are plagued by this attitude, the entire system suffers. It is as though we have finally found the Fountain of Youth, only to gather around it arguing about whether the water might be too cold!”
The rationale and use of AI in small business vs. big business varies. “Large firms typically deploy AI at a systemic level, embedding it across operations through custom-built systems, specialized teams and significant capital investments,” CFIB’s Alegbeh says. “Small businesses tend to rely on off-the-shelf or subscription-based tools such as ChatGPT or Gemini, which require less upfront investment and expertise.
“As a result, big businesses often achieve end-to-end process transformation, while small firms use AI more selectively for marketing, administration or customer service. Even so, the impact on SMEs is substantial.”
The stats and trends are undeniable. The concept of AI in business is a contemporary given and a business reality. Generative AI, agentic AI. “There’s a knowledge gap between business leaders’ understanding of agentic AI and how they can use it to their advantage. Awareness, education and real-life experimentation can help close that gap,” Terrill urges.
“We expect awareness of agentic AI to grow rapidly in the months ahead, and more Canadian organizations will continue to experiment with and invest in the technology – perhaps even more so than generative AI.”
