From chatbots and automation to smart office gadgets, artificial intelligence (AI) technology has become increasingly prominent in the workplace. As smaller businesses see their larger competitors taking advantage of AI and machine learning, they’ve realized they need to jump on the bandwagon to keep up — but they might be wondering how they’ll be able to afford it.

Fortunately for businesses on a budget, you don’t need to break the bank to start incorporating AI and machine learning (ML) into your operations. By starting on a smaller scale with ready-made solutions, you can harness the power of this technology and improve your business performance. Seven members of Forbes Technology Council explain how.

1. Leverage Existing Platforms 

Building your own AI is unavoidably complex and expensive — but that doesn’t mean it can’t benefit you. Large companies like Google (Tensorflow) and Facebook (Fasttext) have open-sourced their own AI efforts, making it possible to build advanced AI into your own applications for a fraction of the cost. – Timothy Chaves, ZipBooks Accounting Software

2. Go One Step At A Time, Beginning With Productivity And Client Experience 

You’re not going to achieve AI-enablement overnight. Start small by integrating first-party apps that facilitate workforce productivity and predictive client experiences. When you’re ready, cloud systems, open-sourced AI and flexible workforce models all make for cost effective AI development and infrastructure. – Adnane Charchour, Exous

3. Tackle A Small Problem With High Return On Investment (ROI) Potential 

Start with a small problem with a high chance of demonstrating positive return on investment (ROI). The key to success is these three steps: define, measure, decide. Define clear expectations and know what AI cannot do. Measure against meaningful baselines in your AI experiment. Then decide whether the experiment worked or not, and fail fast. – Winnie Cheng, Io-Tahoe LLC