The Olvyn Approach
Growing your SME in the AI era
Your positioning: the one decision that multiplies everything else.
Seeking clarity in a noisy world:
What are the best strategies to accelerate a SME growth?
How can SMEs optimise financial management to favour growth?
How can a SME improve its profitability while increasing growth?
What are the advantages of artificial intelligence for sustainable SME growth?
How to choose artificial intelligence use cases for the specific needs of a SME?
How to optimise a SME's cash management and margins to foster a sustainable growth?
How to improve performance management in a SME?
It depends. It follows from your strategic positioning.
AI is redefining the rules of the game
AI automates the complex
Artificial intelligence is making the complex commonplace. Multilingual customer service, data analysis, content creation - everything is becoming accessible to everyone. In this context, the only thing that remains irreplaceable is your unique positioning.
AI can augment or threaten
AI does not tell you what to automate. It automates what you ask it to. If you do not know precisely who you are creating value for and why, you will invest in tools that standardise rather than amplify what makes you unique.
Clarity becomes critical
Your positioning is no longer a theoretical exercise. It is your strategic compass in the age of AI. Without this clarity, you spend money on tools that make you just another competitor among many. With it, you invest in what makes you inimitable.
Imagine two business leaders. Same sector, same size, same market.
- The first one is always on the go. He says yes to everyone, negotiates every contract as if it were his last, and sleeps poorly because of cash flow concerns. 60 hours a week. Business is stagnating.
- The second one moves forward steadily. He knows exactly which customers to target. His prices are 15% higher and accepted without resistance. His cash flow is healthy. 45 hours a week. Double-digit growth.
The difference? The second one has clearly answered a fundamental question: ‘who are we creating value for, and why us rather than someone else?’
This clarity - your positioning - triggers five immediate effects:
- You sell at a higher margin: when you know exactly who to serve and why, two things happen simultaneously. First, justifying your prices becomes natural. Second, unprofitable customers become visible.
- Your business becomes more efficient: because your energy, marketing budget and investments all go in the same direction.
- Your cash flow becomes a tool, not a source of anxiety: without clear positioning, your money is scattered: stock for all types of customers, credit for everyone equally, supplier lead times that are not optimised. Clear positioning reduces your needs and frees up cash to invest, hire, or simply breathe.
- You get out of permanent firefighting mode: "do we launch this product or not?" "do we hire in sales or production?" "do we accept this difficult customer?" When your direction is clear, 80% of these questions are answered in 10 minutes, not 10 days.
- You build an asset that is worth something: whether you plan to sell in 2 years or 20 years, this reality matters. SMEs with clear positioning sell for significantly more than their unclear competitors. Why? Because a buyer pays for vision and predictability.
The internet lesson Europe cannot afford to repeat
Europe missed the Internet wave because adoption was too slow and too defensive. While American companies were integrating the internet into their strategy - selling online, automating their marketing, capturing customer data - most of our European SMEs treated it as a peripheral tool. A showcase website. A LinkedIn presence. A faster response to emails.
AI is different. But only if we learn our lesson. This time, speed of adoption will matter more than size or budget. SMEs that integrate AI into their strategy - not as a gimmick but as a lever for their unique positioning - will stay relevant and potentially dominate their segments. Those that wait to "see how it evolves" will suffer from the commoditisation of their expertise and the compression of their margins.
To know how to invest in AI, you must first know what makes you unique. You must define your positioning.
Your window: 24 months to clarify, not 10 years to catch up.
We are not going to tell you that you'll disappear if you don't act. That would be wrong.
But here's what is true: companies that clarify their positioning now are turning AI into an accelerator. Those that wait are experiencing AI as a threat.
The urgency is real. But you are not alone, and it is not too late.
Stay Ahead
Position consciously and stay relevant in the age of Artificial Intelligence