Where is your business in AI journey?

A clothing seller in Dhaka may use ChatGPT to write a Facebook post. A restaurant in Sylhet may use AI to reply to customer reviews. An exporter may use it to draft emails for foreign buyers. These are useful examples, but they do not mean a business has fully adopted AI.
For businesses, AI adoption can be understood in five simple stages. The first is awareness. At this stage, a business has heard about AI but does not clearly understand what it can do or how it can help.
The second stage is casual use. A business may try tools like ChatGPT for general questions or simple ideas, but there is little or no direct link with business operations.
The third stage is productivity use. AI starts helping with regular tasks such as writing emails, preparing product descriptions, creating social media posts, translating messages, or drafting customer replies.
The fourth stage is decision support. Here, AI is used to collect, organise, compare, and analyse information. For example, a business may use AI to review customer feedback, identify common complaints, compare competitors, summarise sales trends, or find areas for improvement. At this stage, AI supports decisions, but humans still make the final call.
The fifth stage is intelligent integration. AI becomes part of business systems and workflows. It may support marketing campaigns, customer review responses, inventory alerts, customer segmentation, or routine task automation. AI is no longer used only when someone opens a tool. It becomes part of how the business operates.
The danger for many businesses is to confuse activity with progress. Writing a few social media posts with AI may save time, but it will not change the business. Real value comes when AI helps a business understand customers, improve service, reduce waste, compare options, or make faster decisions.
The question for Bangladeshi businesses is no longer whether AI exists. The real question is: where are they now and what must they do to move one stage higher responsibly? If AI does not improve real work, it remains a novelty. AI adoption is not about using AI tools. It is about building business capability.

ABM Kamrul Huda Azad
Head of Operations, UK & Canada,
Daytona Capital Management UK