Entrepreneurs have heard the warnings loud and clear. Adopt AI or be left behind. Embrace digital transformation or become a dinosaur. Adapt or die. And yet, for SMEs, AI for business seems hopelessly cooked in favor of large enterprises. But this isn’t the case at all, according to Jerry Ilao, president of the Philippine AI Business Association (PAIBA). For SMEs to reap the benefits of AI, all they need to do is start.
Mr. Ilao has deep and wide experience in entrepreneurship and the tech industry. I’ve known him since our days in Procter & Gamble when I was in brand and he was in finance. From there, he ventured into entrepreneurship, putting up the ubiquitous Ink All-You-Can business. Clearly bitten by the entrepreneurship bug, he also established Olern, Tellix, Tartino Mobile Optima, and Leappreneur. PAIBA, an organization he co-founded, is dedicated to a single mission: helping SMEs implement AI for business.
“What’s stopping [SMEs] from implementing AI generally is one thing,” he says, “which is knowledge on how to implement AI.”
To provide this knowledge and educate SMEs, PAIBA holds AI Connect sessions every few weeks — all for free. For members of the organization, they also hold AI hackathons to explore the many uses AI can have for Philippine SMEs.
I recently reconnected with him on the RJ Ledesma Podcast. In our conversation, he shared a step-by-step guide on what SMEs need to do to get started with AI for business. Here are some of the highlights:
Get Your Feet Wet. To begin, Mr. Ilao advises entrepreneurs to stop following the latest or hottest tech trends (a.k.a. shiny object syndrome). “Focus on one problem that you want to solve,” he said.
The best way to do this? Just jump in and get your feet wet. There’s nothing wrong with starting with general-use large language models like ChatGPT or Gemini. And the good thing about these general-use AIs is that they can help you in a broad range of tasks, from marketing to customer service, you name it.
By doing this, entrepreneurs can get more comfortable with AI and learn what AI can do for their business. And from there, they can move on to more technical solutions to address that problem they wanted to solve — like integrating AI into business processes or automation.
AI as Your “Thought Partner.” In our conversation, Mr. Ilao gave many use-cases for AI that could be helpful for SMEs. The first was using AI as, what he calls, a “thought partner.”
“When you’re an entrepreneur,” he explained, “you cannot afford a consultant. It’s hard.” But with AI using deep research, it can be equivalent to getting PhD level research.
He recounted, “I did a sample before on market analysis… Sobrang amazed ’yung nag-attend ng session namin because nakalatag na kung ano ’yung SWOT strategy, ano ’yung market opportunities. (Those who attended our session were amazed because we already presented the SWOT strategy, what the market opportunities were.) And that’s done by AI in 10 minutes.”
Another use-case for SMEs is in building company processes. Unlike large corporations, many SMEs cannot spend time and resources on defining and properly designing their processes and systems.
“ChatGPT can do that for you,” he said. “So, travel expense policy, work from home policy, and any SOP from, let’s say, receiving the inventory up to recording it in the system, you can easily do that using ChatGPT.”
The use-cases for SMEs are varied and deep. AI can help design processes for security or spot financial control loopholes — which can be valuable to SMEs who are often prone to theft or fraud.
For marketing, the uses of AI are almost too many to mention. Beyond content creation, SMEs can use AI for market research or e-mail campaigns. Or you can create an AI chatbot to engage customers and provide customer service.
Finally, many Filipino entrepreneurs struggle with finance — a topic close to Mr. Ilao’s heart.
“Maraming mga entrepreneurs na medyo waterloo nila ’yung finance (Finance is the waterloo of many entrepreneurs),” he said. “You can ask ChatGPT to help you with that, analyze financial statements.”
Use AI to Help You With AI. Connected to using AI as your thought partner, he advises using AI to help you learn more about AI — a sort of AI inception, if you will.
Want to create a website? Want to edit videos faster? Ask AI if there is an AI that can do that for you.
Want to check if the process you created with AI is safe and secure? Ask AI to look for loopholes or flaws in your process.
Prompt Engineering Basics. Many of the results you get from AI depend on what you input into your prompt. For this reason, “prompt engineering” has become a big thing. It has become a skill that employers seek, and there are even classes on the topic being offered online. Mr. Ilao offered a simple approach to prompt engineering, which he summarized as RTC — Role, Task and Context.
“Role” is all about telling the AI what it is acting as. “AI is very good at many things,” Mr. Ilao said. “Tell the AI kung ano ’yung role na iti-take niya (tell the AI what role it has to take on).” AI can be a marketer, a researcher, a programmer, a content creator and so much more.
“Task” is about defining what you want it to do clearly.
For “Context,” the idea is to give the AI as much information as you can for more targeted results. “Provide as much context as you can to make the AI output very, very specific to your needs,” Mr. Ilao advised.
CAVEATS
With all these game-changing abilities at the fingertips of entrepreneurs, it’s important to remember that there are limits as well as dangers to using AI.
1. Keep a human in the loop. Mr. Ilao says: “I always say that the AI output is a very good first draft. Never the final one.”
In any process — even one that is automated with AI — there should always be a human in the loop. Don’t just accept whatever the AI gives you. The decision process or the output of AI should always be reviewed.
2. Be aware of concerns. Security, confidentiality, intellectual property ownership. These are all valid concerns when it comes to AI for business. Currently, there are no laws that cover AI in the Philippines, but there are common sense practices that you can employ to ensure that your business remains safe.
3. Do not be dependent on AI. Finally, Mr. Ilao warned about how easy it is to become dependent on AI once you start using it.
“Don’t let AI decide for you,” he said. “Just let AI spell out all the information that you need to make an informed decision. Then you’ll decide.
“And in fact, you can take this further. When you decide, let AI challenge you. This is my decision: what am I missing?”
RJ Ledesma (www.rjledesma.com) is a Hall of Fame Awardee for Best Male Host at the Aliw Awards, a multi-awarded serial entrepreneur, motivational speaker, and business mentor, podcaster, an Honorary Consul, and editor-in-chief of The Business Manual. Mr. Ledesma can be found on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
The RJ Ledesma Podcast is available on Facebook, Spotify, Google and Apple Podcasts. Are there entrepreneurs you want Mr. Ledesma to interview? Let him know at ledesma.rj@gmail.com.
