Hand-holding and the power of free: can a low-cost tailored behavioural intervention carry SMEs over the adoption hurdle?

四分之三的中小企业提供贸易信贷。他们先提供商品或服务，然后再得到报酬。然而，许多中小企业的客户延迟付款或根本不付款。这种“延迟付款”是一个主要问题，它增加了成本，减少了现金流，并消耗了本来可以用来推动业务增长的资金。在极端情况下，它可以迫使一家可行的企业倒闭。对于经常购买这些商品或服务的中小企业来说，应付账款特别耗时，需要花费大量时间进行手工数据输入。如果没有严格的制度，过期的发票就会被遗漏，逾期付款也会升级。企业会计软件为企业管理财务提供了准确有效的解决方案，但它需要大量的数据密钥。信息将以多种形式出现，有纸质的也有电子的，人们需要从中确定主要的供应商、地址、数量，最重要的是，截止日期。人工智能（AI）工具读取文件的准确率超过99%，无需手动检查所有内容。这节省了时间和金钱，可以更好地用于生产活动，并促进及时支付发票。这个试验测试了一个加快人工智能被主流采用的想法。我们相信，大多数中小企业主宁愿在自己的业务上工作，也不愿在会计文书工作上做文章。但我们理解，在没有证明对其特定业务有影响的情况下，他们自然不愿做出改变。因此，我们提供该软件的长期免费试用。这应该能解决成本障碍。我们打算通过提供量身定制的支持、网络研讨会大师班、会计建议和技巧，帮助中小企业克服学习障碍，使其更容易将Evolution AI整合到记账实践中。我们将其与更基本的自助服务模式的有效性进行比较，在自助服务模式中，中小企业免费获得Evolution AI产品（但不是“手把手”支持包）。这是试验的对照干预。这仍然是使用Evolution AI的一种经济上有吸引力的方式，但我们怀疑它在刺激中小企业做出改变方面不会那么有效。在免费试用期之后，我们进行了第二个实验，以测试中小企业是否愿意为继续使用我们认为将证明节省成本的服务付费。中小企业愿意将自己的资金投入到这项技术中，这是对创新采用的严峻考验。

Three quarters of SMEs provide trade credit. They provide the goods or services upfront and get paid later. However, many SMEs have customers that pay them late or not at all. Such 'late payment' is a major problem which increases costs, reduces cash flow, and consumes funds that could otherwise be used to drive business growth. In the extreme, it can force a viable business to close.For the SMEs who are often buying these goods or services, accounts payable is particularly time-consuming, requiring significant time spent in manual data entry. Without rigorous systems in place, overdue invoices get missed and late payment can escalate.Business accounting software provides an accurate and efficient solution for businesses to manage their finances, but it requires much keying of data. Information will come in many formats, both paper and electronic, from which someone needs to identify the essential supplier, address, amount and, crucially, the due-date.Artificial intelligence (AI) tools can read the paperwork with over 99% accuracy and eliminate the need for everything to be manually checked. This saves time and money which could be better spent doing productive activity, and facilitates the timely payment of invoices.This trial tests an idea to speed up mainstream adoption of AI. We believe most SME owners would rather be working on their business than keying in their accounting paperwork. But we understand the natural reluctance to change without proven demonstration of impact within their particular business.Hence we provide a prolonged free trial of the software. This should tackle the cost barriers. And we intend to hold the hand of SMEs through the learning barriers by providing tailored support, webinar masterclasses, accounting advice and tips to make it easy to integrate Evolution AI into bookkeeping practice.We compare this to the effectiveness of a more basic self-service model, where the SME is provided the Evolution AI product for free (but not the 'hand-holding' support package). That is the control intervention of the trial. It remains a financially attractive way to use Evolution AI, but we suspect it will not be as effective at stimulating SMEs to make the change.After the free trial period we have a second experiment that tests SMEs' willingness to pay for continued usage of what we believe will be a demonstrated cost-saver. Such preparedness to commit the SME's own money to the technology is the acid-test of innovation adoption.