NEW ZEALAND BUSINESS NEWS
Empowering Kiwi Businesses
More than a third of New Zealand small and medium-sized businesses still use no artificial intelligence, but that group is shrinking. Research commissioned by small business lender Prospa puts the share of SMEs with no AI use at 36 per cent, down from 45 per cent six months earlier.
On the other side of the ledger, 59 per cent of SMEs now use AI in some form, up from 50 per cent in the earlier survey. The findings come from the Prospa SME Sentiment Tracker, which polled 501 SME decision-makers through independent research company Clarity Insight. The sample covered businesses with fewer than 50 full-time staff and less than AUD $20 million in annual revenue, and was weighted to match the sector’s industry mix.
Adoption is happening piece by piece rather than through company-wide overhauls. The single largest group of users, 33 per cent, have put AI to work in specific business functions. A further 19 per cent are experimenting with tools, and 7 per cent describe AI as integrated across several functions and strategically important to the business.
That spread suggests most owners are picking defined tasks to test, rather than rebuilding how the business runs. Nearly one in five are still in the trial phase, weighing practical results before committing further. For a business without an internal technology team, that staged approach keeps risk contained: a tool either does the job, or it doesn’t, and the decision to keep going rests on what the owner can see.
Among businesses that have not adopted AI, the barriers are about judgement rather than budget. Uncertainty over return on investment was the most cited obstacle, named by 34 per cent of non-users, followed by not knowing which tools suit their needs, at 32 per cent.
Upfront expense came sixth at 12 per cent, and the staff time needed to learn new tools seventh at 11 per cent. Earlier debate about AI uptake in smaller businesses often centred on affordability, particularly for those with tight technology budgets. These results point elsewhere: many hold-outs are trying to figure out what the technology is worth, how to compare one product with another, and where it fits into the workday.
Small business owners and managers typically make technology calls themselves, without a large IT department behind them. They need tools that solve an immediate problem in administration, customer communications, or workflow management.
A crowded field of AI products makes that harder even when entry-level pricing is modest. Choosing between similar-sounding offerings takes time the owner doesn’t have, and the wrong pick costs more than the subscription. The survey results suggest the constraint on uptake is information, not capital.
For anyone selling AI products or advice to small businesses, the pressure is to make selection simple and show evidence that a tool delivers. Lenders and advisers face a similar task, since a business that can’t see the return is unlikely to borrow to fund one.
For owners still on the sidelines, the practical question is narrow: which single task is costing the most time, and is there a tool that demonstrably handles it? Non-adoption remains substantial at 36 per cent, so many in the market have yet to move past informal consideration. The six-month drop in that figure, alongside the rise in use within defined functions, suggests AI is becoming a routine part of small business operations rather than an edge experiment.
NZ Business News reports on the decisions, deals and numbers shaping New Zealand business — the companies making them, the policy and market conditions they work within, and what it means for the people running businesses here.