(This column originally appeared in Forbes)
Here are five things in small business technology that happened this week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?
This Week in Small Business Technology News
Small Business Technology News #1 — Salesforce reveals major AI overhaul
Salesforce is turbo-charging its AI assistant Slackbot with more than 30 new capabilities. The assistant has access to messages, channels and files within Slack and access to Salesforce systems. For example — Slackbot can retrieve client information stored in Salesforce when the customer’s name is mentioned in chat or on a call — demonstrating Slackbot’s actionable intelligence. Salesforce sees this upgraded version as the user’s coworker that provides an “entire AI fleet.” Salesforce CTO Parker Harris said, “Slack is the operating system for work bringing humans, agents, data, and apps together in one trusted conversational interface.”(Source: TechRadar Pro)
Why this is important for your small business:
It’s interesting to watch how companies like Salesforce are tackling AI. On the one hand, Salesforce is the leading CRM application, so anything they do will likely be mimicked by their competitors. Most similar systems have Slack-type messaging systems which means they’ll roll out similar features. On the other hand, Salesforce — like many big software companies — are struggling find a footing in this Claude Code era where vibe-coding may replace much of what they offer. Regardless, if your company is using Slack and Salesforce together it’s important to learn about these new features and lean into them.
Small Business Technology News #2 — AI tax prep risks rise as 25% of filers use chatbots in 2026.
The way Americans prepare their taxes is evolving despite some headlines that report a growing distrust with AI. According to a recent poll published by Adobe, twenty-six percent of taxpayers now use AI chatbots to help prepare or understand their tax returns. There are important drawbacks to consider such as increased level of error rates. Research shows AI systems can be unreliable in financial contexts and in some instances, models give different wrong answers to the same question. The level of complexity involved in tax preparation — e.g., regulations, multi-step calculations, etc. — is often beyond the capability of chatbots to deliver error-free results. Experts conclude that though AI can be helpful with things like explaining complicated tax concepts, tax returns should be checked and verified. (Source: IndexBox)
Why this is important for your small business:
It’s true that in 2026 using AI to prepare one’s taxes is a risky endeavor. The information provided is not completely reliable and there are big security concerns. But does anyone have a doubt that within a few years these systems will be doing our taxes automatically and with little involvement by humans? What will accountants do in the meantime? Hopefully provide a better service!
Small Business Technology News #3 — Microsoft unveils AI upgrades, rolls out Copilot Cowork to early-access customers.
On Monday Microsoft introduced new Copilot features that offer “multi agent orchestration and connected experiences” as stated on its blog. Copilot’s researcher agent “Critique” will access data from OpenAI’s GPT and Anthropic’s Claude agents for every query. GPT will generate content while Claude will review and fact-check it, helping reduce hallucinations and improve accuracy. Microsoft also introduced “Council” — a tool that allows users to see multiple AI answers side-by-side to compare results. This update follows Microsoft’s announcement of Copilot Cowork in March and now available to members of the “Frontier” program, which offers early access to the latest AI features in Microsoft 365. (Source: Reuters)
Why this is important for your small business:
Choose your team: Microsoft, Google, Grok, Anthropic, OpenAI? There will always be connectors and integrations but these platforms will continue to introduce their development tools separately with the aim of drawing businesses to standardize in just one place. For example, if your company is a Microsoft shop it may make best sense to use Microsoft’s cowork tools, rather than another provider, for ease and better support. My sense is that all of these tools will be strong and reliable, it’ll be the user’s choice as to which platform they enjoy most.
Small Business Technology News #4 — Visa and Ramp to use agentic AI to automate corporate bill pay.
Visa and Ramp are introducing AI-powered agents that will handle bill pay tasks automatically. Serving more than 50,000 businesses, Ramp’s platform provides support that includes automated bookkeeping and expense management. With this new AI-powered payment tool, users will enjoy more flexibility and “more control over corporate spending,” according to Ramp’s chief business officer Colin Kennedy. The partnership demonstrates a push toward a future where AI doesn’t just help with finance, it actually runs parts of it. (Source: Finextra)
Why this is important for your small business:
I love these tools and predict they will be commonplace in the next few years. Businesses — small businesses in particular — need to invest in payables automation tools like Ramp (there are other competitors) to help get work done more faster and accurately so that they can deploy the people doing this stuff towards something more profitable.
Small Business Technology News #5 — AI turns simple text into realistic building designs.
Researchers at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) have developed AI systems that can turn simple written descriptions into detailed, realistic images — supporting the work of architects and building designers. AI models have had challenges with accurate representations of real-world structures from prompt-based commands. The Japanese team designed a “retrieval-augmented generation system” that works from text-to-image AI. The process is as follows: The system first produces a simple sketch of a structure from a text prompt. It then fills in additional elements to the sketch from a database of building components. The refined sketched is combined with the original text description to produce a high-quality image of the structure. To read more about the results of the researchers’ work visit the link. (Source: Tech Xplore)
Why this is important for your small business:
Anyone in the design, mechanical engineering and architecture world should be paying close attention. I doubt these tools will become 100% reliable but they will surely increase the efficiency of experts who build things.
Each week I round up five small business technology news stories and explain why they’re important for your business. If you have any interesting stories, please post to my X account @genemarks
