A practical guide to business AI: What it is and how to use it

"Business AI" is a term you see everywhere now. It's gone from a buzzword to something you actually need to stay competitive. But what is it, really? It’s not one magic tool that fixes everything. It's a whole category of tools built for specific jobs, like making customer service smoother or helping your marketing reach more people.

This guide is here to cut through the noise. We’ll walk through what business AI is, look at what the big platforms are offering, and show you how to start using it. Sometimes, the best results come from a tool that does one thing really, really well. For instance, we used the eesel AI blog writer to take our blog traffic from 700 to 750,000 daily impressions in just three months. It’s a good example of how a specialized AI tool can make a huge difference.

What is business AI?

Simply put, business AI is just artificial intelligence that’s been designed and trained to solve specific business problems and automate tasks.

That’s the main difference between it and a general AI. A tool like the free version of ChatGPT is smart, but it knows nothing about your products, customers, or how your company works. Business AI is different because it’s built on your company’s data and understands your goals. It gets the context.

The value it brings usually boils down to three things:

• Efficiency: It handles the repetitive, slow tasks that bog down your teams.
• Intelligence: It looks at your business data and helps you make smarter decisions, faster.
• Growth: It opens up new ways to increase sales and give customers a better experience.

Here’s a simple way to think about it: general AI is like a brilliant intern who knows a lot but has no idea how your business runs. Business AI is like an experienced employee who already knows your systems and can get to work right away.

The different types of platforms for business AI

Business AI tools come in a few different flavors, each built for different needs. They generally fall into a few categories, from big enterprise platforms to smaller, specialized tools.

Enterprise suites for business AI like SAP

Enterprise suites are the all-in-one platforms that plug directly into a company’s core systems, like ERP, supply chain management, and HR.

They work by using the massive amount of data already in these systems to find insights and automate workflows. For example, SAP's AI copilot, Joule, can manage "Joule Agents" that automate tricky, cross-department processes in finance and supply chain. The big plus here is context. The AI has access to years of business data, so it can manage complex, end-to-end tasks. The downside is that these platforms can be complicated and expensive to set up, often needing a lot of technical help. They’re usually built for large companies and can be too much for smaller teams just trying to solve one problem.

Indeed, we are witnessing the consumerization of enterprise software: Power is shifting from IT departments and SAP consultants → to business users. Time-to-value is collapsing from years → hours. Cost structures are flipping from $10M+ → $100/month. This doesn’t mean SAP vanishes overnight-but it does mean its addressable market shrinks to only the most complex, regulated, global enterprises.

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Customer-facing business AI like Meta

These tools are all about improving how you talk to customers, mostly for sales, marketing, and support. They work like an "AI sales concierge" by connecting with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger.

Meta's AI learns from your product catalog, social media posts, and ad campaigns to give customers personalized product suggestions and 24/7 support. The setup is usually simple and requires no code, so businesses can quickly start making an impact on sales and engagement. The main drawback is that these tools are mostly stuck in the Meta ecosystem, which limits their use for other needs like internal knowledge management or creating content outside of social media.

Generalist and developer platforms for business AI like OpenAI

This category covers platforms that give you access to powerful AI models for general office work or for building your own custom apps.

Products like ChatGPT Business and Enterprise give teams a secure place to use AI together without worrying about their data being used for training. For developers, APIs provide the tools to build custom AI apps from the ground up. These platforms are very flexible and can be used for almost anything. However, building with the API requires a developer. And while general tools like ChatGPT are powerful, they don't have any built-in business context. That means you have to feed them all the right information for every single task, which isn't very efficient for regular business processes.

Key use cases for business AI

No matter which platform you pick, the idea is to use AI for real business tasks to get a real result. Here are a few of the most common and effective ways to use it.

Automating customer service and support with business AI

AI agents can now handle a large chunk of frontline support questions. They can answer common questions around the clock, offer quick solutions, and pass the tough issues to the right human agent. At eesel AI, we've seen this lead to 81% of support conversations being resolved without any human help.

Besides full automation, AI can also work alongside human agents. It can summarize long customer conversations in seconds, giving agents the context they need to solve problems faster. This makes customers happier and lets the support team focus on more complex problems. For example, tools like eesel's AI Copilot plug right into help desks like Zendesk and Freshdesk, learning from old tickets to write replies that sound just like a seasoned agent.

Driving organic growth with the eesel AI blog writer

Creating content is essential for growing organically, but it takes a lot of time. That makes it a perfect job for a specialized business AI tool.

The eesel AI blog writer is a tool built specifically to turn a single keyword into a full, ready-to-publish blog post. Unlike general writing tools that give you a rough draft, it’s designed to solve the actual problems content teams have, with specific features built right in:

• Automated Research & Rich Media: It doesn't just write. It researches the topic and automatically adds images, infographics, and tables to make the content more interesting and useful.
• Authentic Social Proof: It finds and embeds relevant YouTube videos and real quotes from Reddit on the topic. This adds a human touch and credibility that generic AI content is missing.
• Built-in SEO and AEO: The content is optimized for search engines (SEO) and the new AI Answer Engines (AEO), like Google's AI Overviews. This is becoming more and more important for staying visible in search results.

We used this very tool to grow our own blog from 700 to 750,000 daily impressions in three months by publishing over 1,000 optimized articles. It’s a great example of how a specialized AI tool can deliver a specific, measurable result.

Improving internal operations and knowledge sharing with business AI

AI can also make a big difference to how things run internally. It can automate repetitive tasks like data entry, scheduling, or writing up meeting notes, which frees up your team's time for more important work.

Another great use is for internal knowledge bases. Instead of searching through folders in Confluence or Google Drive, employees can just ask a question in Slack or Microsoft Teams. An internal AI can find the answer instantly by looking through company documents. This helps new hires get up to speed much faster and cuts down on the time everyone spends looking for information. It's why tools like eesel's AI internal chat are becoming common in fast-paced companies.

Comparing top business AI solutions

Picking the right tool is all about your specific needs, budget, and technical skills. A big company with an existing SAP setup has different needs than a startup trying to grow its content marketing. Here’s a simple comparison of the platforms we’ve covered.

The SAP business AI solution

SAP’s strategy is to build AI into every core business function. Its Joule copilot and agents use the deep context from existing SAP data in finance, supply chain, and HR to automate complex workflows.

• Pricing: SAP doesn't share public prices for its Business AI products. Pricing is custom and included in larger enterprise deals. To get a quote, you have to request a demo. This is typical for big enterprise software, but the lack of clear pricing can be a hurdle for small and mid-sized businesses.

The Meta business AI solution

Meta's tool is built to be a "sales concierge" that helps customers find products and get answers right inside Meta's apps and on your website. It learns from your product catalog and ads to offer personalized, conversational suggestions.

• Pricing: Meta says its Business AI is free to use with ads. For use on your website, Messenger, and WhatsApp, it costs a "fraction of the typical cost," but specific prices aren't listed publicly, making it hard to estimate the total cost.

OpenAI for business

OpenAI provides both ready-to-use tools for business users and a powerful API for developers. ChatGPT Business and Enterprise offer secure, collaborative spaces for teams to use AI for research, content creation, and analysis.

• Pricing:
  • ChatGPT Business: Starts at $25 per user, per month, billed annually.
  • ChatGPT Enterprise: Custom pricing for larger companies that need more control and security.
  • API Platform: Pay-as-you-go based on how much data (tokens) you use.
• Limitation: While very capable, it’s still a general tool. To get business-specific results, you either have to provide a lot of context with every prompt or have developers build a custom solution with the API.

Your next step with business AI

The main thing to remember is that business AI isn't just one thing. It's a wide range of powerful tools, and the right one for you depends on the problem you're trying to solve.

You don't need a huge, complicated enterprise platform to get value from AI. Often, the best way to start is by targeting a specific, high-impact area like marketing or customer support with a tool built for that exact job. This is especially true for AI for small businesses.

For teams trying to drive organic growth, content creation is one of the best levers you can pull. But it's also one of the most time-consuming and difficult things to scale. This is where a specialized tool can really help. Instead of trying to make a general AI act like a marketing expert, you can use a tool that was built for the job from the start.

Ready to see the difference? Try the eesel AI blog writer for free.