How AI Is Empowering Small Businesses With Creative Collaboration

Chandra Sinnathamby, Adobe’s director, digital media B2B strategy & GTM, Asia-Pacific, explains how the tech firm is empowering its small business customers with new AI tools, including its Adobe Firefly tools.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, small businesses face numerous challenges when it comes to creating captivating content that resonates with their audience. Despite the challenges posed by widespread inflation, rapidly rising wages and interest rates, as well as persistent supply chain disruptions, 56 per cent of Australian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are anticipating positive revenue growth in 2023, representing the highest increase in seven years.

Humans are uniquely creative — intrinsically driven to express ideas, convey emotion and inspire action. Creativity has evolved together with technological innovation, from simplistic drawing to painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and video – continuously expanding and popularising creative expression for work and play.

However, limited resources, budget constraints, and time limitations often hinder smaller businesses from producing professional-quality materials. However, with advanced generative AI capabilities on platforms such as Adobe Firefly, small businesses can now access powerful toolsets that empower them to enhance their creative collaboration, streamline workflows, and easily produce stunning visuals. According to the latest Forrester Predictions 2024 report, generative AI is poised to increase productivity across departments, freeing up almost 50 per cent more time for employees. This shift in focus can help them engage in creative problem-solving, driving customer-centric innovation and creating unprecedented business value.

Simplifying the Creative & Collaboration Process

Small businesses need user-friendly platforms that simplify the creative process, giving them the opportunity to transform their ideas into polished designs, social posts, flyers, logos, documents and more, with intuitive interfaces and AI-powered features. For example, businesses can use Adobe Express, the creative co-pilot powered by Firefly with its new features including Generative Fill, text to template etc. to design a logo, create social media graphics, or develop marketing collateral, with a wide range of templates, fonts, and design elements that can be easily customised to align with a brand’s unique identity.

One of the key challenges for small businesses is coordinating and collaborating on creative projects, especially when team members are geographically dispersed. Offering seamless collaboration features powered by AI allows multiple team members to simultaneously work on a project, providing real-time feedback, making revisions, and ensuring a smooth workflow. AI, machine learning, and emerging generative AI technologies are helping companies automate many aspects of content creation, and workflow collaboration solutions are helping teams work faster and deliver more.

Smart Content Creation with gen AI-Powered Design

Leveraging AI can enhance the creative process. Generative AI capabilities can automatically suggest design improvements, offer relevant templates, generate ideas, offer solutions, and provide intelligent recommendations. This empowers small businesses by eliminating the need for extensive design expertise, allowing them to create visually appealing content quickly and efficiently. Generative AI is quickly emerging as this era’s most significant, new creative medium. Like the invention of photography, generative AI will transform professional creativity and democratise creation for anyone who can describe what’s in their mind’s eye.

Creating engaging and relevant content is crucial for small businesses to stand out in the digital realm. Adobe Express equips users with AI-driven tools to generate and customise content tailored to their specific needs. With features like automated text generation, image cropping, and colour palette suggestions, small businesses can effortlessly create eye-catching visuals that captivate their target audience. New creative tools and platforms are giving people of every skill and experience level the ability to express and share their ideas and creativity with global audiences. These new creative tools and platforms empower small and large businesses with new skills—and possibly even new expectations—that they’re bringing to work.

Access Anywhere, Anytime for Streamlined Workflows

Time is of the essence for small businesses, and optimising workflow processes is essential for efficiency. Adobe Express enables users to streamline their creative workflows through AI automation. Tasks like resizing graphics for different platforms, organising project files, and exporting designs in various formats can be automated, saving valuable time and effort. This efficiency allows small businesses to focus on other critical aspects of their operations. Additionally, the cloud-based nature of these platforms ensures that small businesses can access their projects and collaborate with their teams from anywhere, at any time. Whether working from the office, home or while on the go, users can seamlessly pick up where they left off, ensuring continuity and productivity.

In today’s competitive landscape, small businesses need all the tools and resources they can get to effectively communicate their brand’s message and connect with their audience. By empowering small businesses with user-friendly platforms that combine AI capabilities, creative collaboration features, and streamlined workflows, small businesses can elevate their visual content, establish a cohesive brand identity, stand out from the crowd, and excel in today’s digital landscape.