By Alex Rutter, EMEA MD for AI at Google Cloud
As the dust settles on the new business year, those who have successfully embraced AI technology are now seeing the benefits firsthand and driving forward the evolution of their industries.
From the rise of Agentic AI to multi-modal analysis and content generation, 2025 marks a significant crossroads for businesses navigating how to use AI to streamline knowledge sharing, revolutionise data analysis and tailor AI tools specifically to their products, customers and unique selling point.
In this way, AI is effectively levelling the playing field for small and medium-sized enterprises. To capitalise on this opportunity, here are four ways businesses can transform their trajectory by using AI tools such as enterprise search, multi-modal creativity, and API streaming to unlock new levels of data-driven decision making across the board.
Establish a central knowledge hub
At the centre of any future-proof organisation lies a central repository of valuable data, capturing both consumer behaviour and purchasing patterns, as well as internal traffic and productivity. Although essential to the digital transformation of the business, many departments still rely on siloed systems, making it challenging to quickly access information or address customer queries. In fact, Google research shows on average, enterprise workers use four to six tools just to ask and answer a single question.
Enter enterprise search, an AI-powered knowledge management solution that uses real-time analysis and intelligent AI agents to consolidate business intelligence (BI). By providing informed responses to complex questions, alongside actionable recommendations based on a company’s unique data, enterprise search equips employees with a single source of truth. This approach has the potential to transform internal workflows, unlocking new levels of visibility across the organisation that can be used to provide more customer-centric service.
Open up collaboration across key platforms and applications
Once businesses have visibility of their data, streaming APIs can enable different applications to seamlessly communicate with one another, further improving the flow of information across business functions. Streaming APIs form a vital part of the BI puzzle, as they ingest information from a range of sources and interact with large language models (LLM) at the edge to provide real-time insights.
In practice, this equips employees with access to live updates on shared documents or a real-time dashboard providing key details, such as shipment delays and stock availability.
With the introduction of AI-powered data analysis, businesses have never been more informed or responsive to customer needs. Beyond enabling meaningful customer interactions and bolstering brand loyalty, gen AI tools can unlock new efficiencies internally, freeing up employees for higher-value activity.
Tap into personal insights
84% of consumers in Europe report their favourite brands treat them as individuals, and with the advancement of AI-empowered customer service, personalised and intuitive shopping experiences are becoming the expected standard.
Multi-modal gen AI can provide businesses with a major advantage here, particularly when supported by deep customer insight and business data. For example, new image-to-video models such as Google Cloud’s Veo allow businesses to generate high-definition videos from a simple text or image prompt, using stock imagery to tailor content to the individual customer and their preferences.
Brand marketing and advertising content can now be created almost instantly, providing endless opportunities for refinement and creative expression. Advanced text-to-image models such as Imagen 3 are driving a new era in targeted marketing that allows brands to evolve alongside consumer trends with greater speed and agility.
Unlock AI-enhanced human service
The true potential of digital transformation lies in combining AI data analysis and information management with the personable impact of human-centric service.
No two customers are alike, and businesses must move away from a one-size-fits-all approach. In the same way, this technology is not intended to exclude human interaction, but rather empower it. Businesses can use data-driven insights to get closer to their customers than ever before, and speak to them across different formats including image, text and video. By building somewhat of a ‘customer profile’ for each interaction, businesses can deliver highly-personalised experiences that meet customer needs, supercharge brand loyalty and drive measurable growth.
