For years, small and medium-sized businesses took the same approach to AI: watch, wait, and let someone else absorb the cost of a failed experiment. In 2026, that calculus has changed. IDC’s Katie Evans, Senior Director of Worldwide Small and Medium Business Research, sat down to share what the latest data, drawn from more than 2,700 IT decision-makers across 23 countries, reveals about where SMBs are now, what’s driving the shift, and what any SMB owner should do before making their first AI investment.
The “fast follower” strategy paid off
Three years ago, IDC research consistently surfaced a pattern in how SMBs talked about AI. They weren’t early adopters. They were deliberate holdouts, not because they didn’t see the opportunity, but because the risk calculus didn’t work in their favor.
“They would say, ‘I want to be a fast follower,'” Evans explains. “We don’t have the budget for a failed AI experiment.”
That instinct turned out to be sound strategy. While large enterprises absorbed the costs of early-stage AI experiments (the failed pilots, the shaky implementations, the expensive custom builds), SMBs watched and learned. By the time vendors began packaging AI into the tools SMBs were already using, those businesses knew exactly what they were looking for.
IDC’s 2025 survey captured the inflection: in 2024, AI ranked third among forward-looking technology priorities for SMBs. By 2025, it had jumped to number one. The share of SMBs not using AI at all dropped from 11.2% to 6.3% in a single year.
The proof arrived. The fast followers moved. And the first thing most of them did was look inward.
What SMBs are actually using AI for
The businesses that have moved fastest share a common starting point: they looked at their own operations before they looked at any vendor. The number one current AI use case for SMBs worldwide reflects that instinct: generative AI for content creation. That includes marketing copy, internal documentation, customer communications, and code. It’s the entry point, and it’s well-established.
But the picture is expanding. IDC’s research shows SMBs are moving beyond isolated productivity tools into more operational territory. Digital assistants to manage tasks are rising fast, particularly among smaller businesses with lean staff. Robotic process automation (RPA) is growing. And the next wave, agentic AI, which can take autonomous action on behalf of a business, is already on the planning horizon.
Evans points to a practical lens for SMBs trying to decide where AI fits in their business: look at where work is piling up.
“Look for high-volume, repetitive tasks: invoice processing, data entry, inventory tagging, moving figures from PDFs to spreadsheets,” she says. “If those tasks are increasing as your business grows, you’re building a bottleneck. That’s where AI can take over.”
There’s a retention argument here too. SMBs, which often can’t match the compensation packages of larger competitors, can use AI to remove the dull, error-prone work that drives good employees out the door. “If you can make their workplace more fulfilling by leaning into technology,” Evans notes, “it really helps with retention.”
The goal, she is clear, isn’t to save a few minutes per task. It’s to increase revenue per employee.
But knowing where AI can help is only half the equation. The other half is finding a solution that a lean, non-technical team can actually use.
Why embedded AI is winning
Here is the constraint that shapes everything else for SMBs: 40% of the nearly 3,000 SMBs IDC surveyed do not have a single full-time IT employee in-house. That number has held steady for several years, even as SMB technology budgets have grown. A third of SMBs cite lack of IT staff as a top challenge. Another third flag user adoption as a major obstacle.
These numbers explain why standalone AI point solutions are losing to embedded ones.
“SMBs that are seeing real results from AI are not adding it as a separate point solution,” Evans says. “They’re turning on AI capabilities that are already inside the platforms they use every day: their CRM, their ERP, their accounting system.”
The logic is straightforward: no new interface to learn, no separate implementation cycle, no change management burden. The vendor is already known and trusted. The AI feature is just a feature that gets switched on.
Vendors have started meeting SMBs where they are. IDC’s 2026 market data shows a clear shift toward GenAI as the top forward-looking technology priority, overtaking traditional AI and process automation. And increasingly, vendors are embedding those capabilities directly into their products: consumer-grade interfaces, guided chat prompts, no-code and low-code options, designed for non-technical staff with no IT backup.
“As easy as you can make AI for your employees to use is the key,” Evans says. “Think of it like an app on your phone. Something that just works.”
Vendors are getting there. But two obstacles are slowing the journey for SMBs that are ready to move.
The barriers that still need solving
Unpredictable pricing is the first. When an SMB implements an AI capability, sees it working, and then watches its bill triple because it crossed an invisible usage tier, trust breaks down fast. Evans puts it plainly: “SMBs have tighter budgets. Unpredictable costs are a big red flag.”
What SMBs want is transparency: credit-based models that let them control usage, freemium options that allow experimentation before commitment, and clear communication about what each pricing tier actually means. The lowest price isn’t always the winner. Predictable pricing, where the total cost of ownership is legible, is.
Security is the other major barrier, and it’s gotten bigger, not smaller. IDC’s 2026 data found that implementing new technology securely is the number one challenge SMBs name when asked what’s standing between them and their business priorities. It ranked above lack of budget, above user adoption, above lack of IT staff.
“AI is a data guzzler,” Evans says. “It constantly needs new, fresh data to train its models. So SMBs are asking: where is the data coming from? Are you using my customers’ data? How long is it being stored?”
The ask from SMBs is clear: security and compliance built in, not bolted on. A business with no cybersecurity expert on staff needs its vendor to handle that layer. And for an SMB still building consumer trust and brand reputation, a breach isn’t just an operational disruption. It’s potentially an existential one.
IDC forecasts that 50% of SMBs will increase security spending over the next 12 months. For tech suppliers, that is signal: security credibility is a sales requirement, not a feature differentiator.
For SMB owners, it is a checklist item. Before signing with any AI vendor, ask how they handle your data, where it is stored, and what compliance frameworks they operate under. Pricing and ease of use matter. So does knowing your customers’ information is protected. With those boxes checked, the path forward is clearer than it has ever been.
What smart SMBs should do next
The data is there. The vendor options are growing. The path to AI adoption for SMBs isn’t as steep as it was three years ago. But it still requires some deliberate homework.
Evans’s advice, distilled from conversations with hundreds of SMBs and thousands of data points: start with an operational audit. Before evaluating any specific AI tool, walk your own business and look for the work that consistently slows you down. High-volume, repetitive tasks. Processes that pile up as you grow. Places where a lean staff is spending hours on work that produces no strategic value.
Then look for AI that is embedded in platforms you already trust, built for non-technical users, and priced transparently. Any vendor worth considering should be able to show you measurable outcomes, not just capabilities.
“Many solutions that are a good fit for your business are out there,” Evans says. “But you need to find something that meets your unique needs. Do your homework.”
IDC predicts that by 2027, driven by the widespread adoption of AI and agentic AI, 70% of medium-sized businesses will achieve digital payback at twice the rate of previous technology cycles. That’s not a forecast about large enterprises with armies of engineers. That’s a forecast about companies like yours.
The window the fast followers waited for is open. The question now is how confidently you walk through it.
