🌟 Vasilij’s Note
This month has tipped from “AI is coming” to “AI is already reorganising how small teams work”. Salesforce is turning Agentforce into a serious revenue engine, Microsoft has finally priced Copilot for SMEs, and brand‑new agent suites are arriving for analytics and front‑line operations. The short version: you now have more ways than ever to get real leverage from agents without hiring an AI team.
In Today's Edition:
This Week in Agents | What Changed
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business goes GA for SMBs → Microsoft has officially launched Copilot Business for small and medium-sized companies, bringing full AI support across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams for $21/user/month (up to 300 seats). For SMEs this effectively turns Microsoft 365 into the default agent surface — AI layered on top of the docs, email and workflows your team already lives in, not yet another tool to adopt.
MicrosoftSalesforce Agentforce 360 hits a $500M run rate. → Salesforce’s agent platform has crossed half a billion dollars in annualised revenue, growing over 300% year-on-year and expanding from enterprise deployments into the mid-market. This is hard evidence that agentic workflows are no longer experimental — they’re becoming the operational backbone for sales and service teams.
ThoughtSpot launches four BI agents for analytics automation. → ThoughtSpot introduced a suite of “Spotter” BI agents that work as a team to handle modelling, dashboard creation and ad-hoc analysis. The effect: BI cycles that once took days now take minutes. For SMEs with small or overstretched data teams, this signals that analytics is becoming far more self-serve and agent-driven.
GlobeNewswire
Top Moves - Signal → Impact
AI adoption goes from “experiment” to “default”
A new U.S. Chamber of Commerce recap of Salesforce SMB data shows:
75% of SMBs are experimenting with or using AI
34% have fully implemented it
91% of adopters say AI boosts revenue
90% say it improves operational efficiency
→ Why it matters: If you’re not doing anything meaningful with AI yet, you are now in a shrinking minority. The question has shifted from “Should we?” to “Which workflow delivers ROI first?”
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
AI-driven lending begins to close the SME funding gap
UK fintech Juice raised £25M to tackle the UK’s £22B SME funding gap using AI to underwrite revolving credit with real-time performance data — not collateral.
Tech Funding News
→ Operating guidance: If you’re a growing SME with good performance but weak collateral, AI lenders may now offer cheaper, faster access to working capital than traditional banks. Worth benchmarking.
Data governance becomes a mainstream AI cost & risk lever
KPMG signed a three-year deal with British AI firm Aiimi to deploy a Workplace AI platform that classifies, cleans and routes data before feeding it downstream into AI workflows — having already saved clients ~£1M by deleting low-value data.
Accountancy Today
→ Risk or opportunity: Clean data = reliable agents. Even a lightweight hygiene pass (permissions, retention, “source of truth” systems) dramatically reduces hallucinations and compliance headaches.
Upskilling Spotlight | Learn This Week
AI for small business – official SBA guide
Outcome: A practical overview of where AI can help (operations, marketing, cybersecurity, finance), plus the risks and basic governance steps for small firms. The SBA explicitly recommends starting with small, specific use cases and adding human review to catch errors or bias. SBA
OpenAI Academy – Small Business Prompt Pack and videos
Outcome: Concrete prompt “recipes” and short walkthrough videos that you can drop straight into day‑to‑day tasks – drafting emails, creating marketing plans, building SOPs, and summarising reports. It is designed specifically for small businesses rather than generic tech demos. OpenAI Academy
Maker Note | What I built this week
This week I played with Gamma for slide creation and recorded a short walkthrough on my YouTube channel showing how it works. Gamma takes a simple outline and turns it into a full deck in minutes, with structure, visuals and layouts that would normally take you an hour in PowerPoint.
Decision: Gamma stays in my toolkit as the default way to get from idea to first‑draft slides fast, so I can spend my time tightening the story rather than nudging text boxes around.
See how Gamma AI transforms a rough idea into a client-ready deck in minutes complete with data stories, branded templates and AI-powered editing, minus the formatting pain.
Operator’s Picks | Tools To Try
Sintra AI – multi‑agent “AI team” for non‑technical founders
Use for spinning up a small “AI staff” without writing code – marketing, support, sales, recruiting and more wrapped into 12 specialised “AI helpers” under a central Brain AI.
Stand‑out: business‑user‑friendly interface plus pre‑built “Power‑Ups”, so you can deploy multiple agents across your business rather than a single chatbot. Sintra
Tidio + Lyro – affordable AI support for e-commerce and service SMEs
Use for live chat plus AI‑powered front‑line support on your site and social channels. Tidio’s Lyro AI agent can resolve a large chunk of common queries automatically, with starter bundles around 29 dollars a month for small teams.
Stand‑out: clean UI, multi‑channel coverage and a pricing model that makes sense for small stores that want to automate 50 to 70 percent of low‑value tickets before a human ever gets involved. Tidio
n8n – open‑source workflow backbone for your AI stack
Use for wiring models and SaaS tools together into actual automations – think “if a new lead arrives and AI scores it high, push it into CRM, add it to Klaviyo segment and ping Slack”.
Stand‑out: open‑source, self‑hostable and fair‑code, so you keep control of your data and costs while still getting enterprise‑grade workflow automation. n8n
Deep Dive | Thesis & Playbook
December 2025 is a real inflection point. Agentforce 360 crossed half a billion in revenue. Microsoft priced full Copilot at $21/seat for SMEs. And the majority of small businesses say they’re either using or planning to expand AI next year. Salesforce
On Paper
Agents are now embedded directly inside the tools where work already happens: CRM, office suites, and analytics platforms.
SMB packages like Copilot Business give smaller teams access to the same core capabilities as enterprise customers.
Open-source models like DeepSeek-V2.5 provide near GPT-4-class performance under permissive licences — ideal for cost-sensitive internal agents.
In Practice
Process, not model, determines reliability. Salesforce cuts handle times by double digits — but only when the agent sits inside clean workflows with clear rules.
Adoption is ahead of skills. Leaders want AI; many don’t know where to begin.
Real value shows up in unglamorous workflows. Hiring, timesheets, schedule optimisation, ticket triage — the boring work that AI can now do well.
Issues / Backlash
Staff worry that “AI employees” will replace junior roles, especially where vendors literally market agents as drop‑in replacements.
Poor early experiments – badly prompted chatbots, hallucinated numbers in reports – can create scepticism that slows down serious projects.
Regulators and customers are increasingly interested in disclosure and data use. Deals like KPMG’s workplace AI rollout with Aiimi underline how seriously larger firms are taking data classification and retention before turning agents loose.
My Take (What to do)
Startup: Use agents to delay non‑core hires. Put AI on high-volume, repetitive work first – support triage, basic sales follow‑up, reporting – and hire humans where creativity, relationships and complex judgement matter.
SMB: Pick one external-facing workflow (for example, first‑line support, lead qualification) and one internal workflow (for example, weekly reporting, document drafting) to automate. Assign a named owner to each agent, with explicit success metrics.
Enterprise: Standardise on an “agent stack” so every team is not reinventing the wheel – approved models, data access patterns, security controls and QA practices – then let business units experiment inside that boundary.
How to Try (15-minute path)
Choose a painful, repetitive workflow with clear inputs and outputs - for example “reply to common support questions from templates” or “summarise weekly KPIs and email the team”.
Prototype using something you already have – Copilot in Outlook or Excel, a support tool with an AI add‑on, or a simple internal agent wired to your CRM via n8n. Start with a small, low-risk subset of data.
Track one metric for two weeks – time saved, response time, or number of manual touches removed – and only then decide whether to scale or kill the experiment. If it works, write it up as a playbook and repeat on the next workflow.
Spotlight Tool | Gamma
Gamma - AI slide creation for people who hate slides
Purpose: turn outlines and rough ideas into presentable decks without wrestling PowerPoint. Edge: natural language first – you describe what you want, and Gamma generates the deck structure, layouts and imagery.
→ Paste an outline and get a first draft deck in under a minute. • Regenerate sections until the narrative lands. • Export to PowerPoint, Google Slides or share as a web link for clients and stakeholders
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Sponsored - Partner
n8n – An open‑source automation platform that lets you chain tools like DeepSeek, OpenAI, Gemini and your existing SaaS into real business workflows without paying per step. Ideal as the backbone for your first serious AI automations. Try: n8n
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