Pelumi Ololade Pelumi is the Founder of Pop A.I Automations, an artificial intelligence and automation company focused on helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) scale through seamless automation solutions typically available only to larger corporations. By leveraging AI-powered systems, he helps businesses automate repetitive processes, improve customer engagement, streamline operations and increase productivity without requiring extensive technical expertise. Pelumi holds a Master’s degree in Business Intelligence Systems and Data Mining from De Montfort University, United Kingdom, where he graduated with distinction in 2023. Prior to this, he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Babcock University, graduating with a Second Class Upper Division. He completed his secondary education at Caleb International College. In this interview with KEHINDE OLATUNJI, Pelumi discusses what inspired the establishment of Pop A.I Automations, how artificial intelligence is transforming business operations, the common operational challenges facing SMEs and why many businesses struggle to adopt automation.

What informed your decision to establish Pop A.I Automations?

It started with my passion for working with data. Between my academic background and experience across economics, banking, data analytics and customer service, I kept noticing the same pattern: good decisions come from good information. Yet many small business owners simply don’t have the time or tools to turn their data into meaningful insights.

I realised that the same systems large corporations use to optimise operations could also help local businesses. That became the foundation of Pop A.I Automations, to make enterprise-level automation and AI solutions accessible and affordable for SMEs. My goal is to ensure that a grocery store, salon or neighbourhood business can benefit from the same operational efficiency as a much larger company without needing a technical background or a huge budget.

What business problems were you seeing repeatedly that convinced you automation was becoming essential for SMEs?

My first case study and client came from direct observation. I regularly shopped at local ethnic grocery stores and patronised other SMEs, such as hair salons in the UK, and noticed how tedious many of their day-to-day operations were.

Tasks like monitoring stock levels, placing orders on time, responding to customers’ frequently asked questions, tracking orders, onboarding new customers, and even booking and managing appointments were all handled manually. This often resulted in service gaps, delayed deliveries, missed leads, duplicate or conflicting appointments, and several other operational inefficiencies.

It became clear to me that founding Pop A.I Automations would enable these businesses to streamline their operations through affordable automation solutions, helping them save time, improve efficiency and deliver better customer experiences.

How is AI changing the way small and medium-sized businesses operate today?

The pace of change is honestly hard to keep up with. There seems to be a meaningful advancement in AI almost every week. For SMEs, the biggest transformation is in automating the repetitive tasks that used to consume a business owner’s day, answering the same customer enquiries repeatedly while simultaneously trying to run a restaurant, barbershop, grocery store or any other business.

With the right automation in place, a small business owner can effectively have a team of AI agents working around the clock at a fraction of the cost of hiring additional staff. These can function as a receptionist, sales representative and inventory manager, all operating seamlessly in the background. A chatbot, for instance, can be trained using a business’s actual FAQs, allowing it to respond accurately, schedule appointments directly into a calendar, update the CRM, process orders and confirmations, and seamlessly transfer conversations to a human agent whenever certain trigger words arise. It can also route enquiries to the appropriate AI agent based on the customer’s request, ensuring businesses don’t lose potential customers simply because no one responded quickly enough.

Inventory management is another area where AI is making a significant impact. Automation can continuously monitor stock levels, compare them against preset thresholds and automatically place orders with suppliers before products run out. This means business owners are less likely to discover they are out of stock through a frustrated customer.

We’re still in the early stages of what’s possible. AI can be applied across virtually every aspect of an SME’s operations, and I believe it will only continue to make running a business easier. This is far more than a passing trend—it’s the future of business operations.

What are the biggest operational inefficiencies you encounter when working with businesses?

The same set of problems appears repeatedly, regardless of the type of business I’m working with. Manual order processing is probably the most common. Staff respond to customers one by one, check stock manually and then record everything separately afterwards. It’s a slow and inefficient process.

Customer onboarding is another major challenge. New customers often receive inconsistent or delayed responses because there isn’t a structured system in place—it’s usually left to whoever is available at the time. Then there’s the issue of disconnected customer relationship management (CRM) systems, where customer information is spread across multiple platforms that don’t communicate with one another.

What ties all these challenges together is that they aren’t really people problems—they are systems problems. Employees aren’t necessarily doing anything wrong; they simply lack the infrastructure needed to automate repetitive tasks. That’s usually the first thing I look for when I begin working with a business—not what they are doing poorly, but what they are still doing manually that should already be running automatically in the background.

Why do many businesses struggle to adopt automation successfully?

One of the biggest reasons is that people naturally prefer familiar ways of working. Asking business owners to change their existing processes, even for a proven solution, can feel stressful and risky because they often focus more on the immediate disruption than the long-term benefits in terms of time and cost savings.

Another major challenge is the initial setup cost rather than the ongoing maintenance. Many SMEs don’t fully appreciate the value of automation until they see competitors achieving better results with it.

The other issue is that businesses often implement automation in isolated pieces instead of building a connected system. They might automate one stage of the customer journey while leaving everything else manual; creating a patchwork of disconnected processes that still requires significant manual intervention behind the scenes. I always try to build automation as an integrated, reusable system from the outset because that’s usually the difference between automation that delivers lasting value and automation that gets abandoned after a few months.

What advice would you give business owners considering automation for the first time?

Start by identifying exactly where the bottleneck is before you start looking for tools. A lot of businesses jump straight to saying, “We need a chatbot,” without first understanding what’s actually slow or broken in their operations.

I always measure a process before making any changes. With Wura Foods, for example, we found that handling customer orders manually took between eight and 12 minutes. After implementing automation, we were able to reduce that to under 90 seconds. Having measurable results makes it much easier to demonstrate the value of automation.

I would also advise business owners to think in terms of building infrastructure rather than looking for a quick fix.

Invest in systems that can grow with your business and be reused over time, rather than one-off solutions. That’s where the real long-term value lies.

What is your long-term vision for Pop A.I Automations?

My long-term vision is to grow Pop A.I Automations into a full-service AI and web design agency focused on improving business operations from the ground up, rather than simply delivering one-off automation projects.

While much of our work today is centred on SMEs, the same approach—building reusable systems that solve real operational bottlenecks—can be applied just as effectively to larger organisations. The goal is to scale what we are doing with small businesses into solutions that can support larger corporations, without losing the practical, problem-first mindset that has defined our work from the beginning.

Do you think Nigeria is ready for AI, and what are the challenges and prospects of AI in Nigeria?

I’d say Nigeria isn’t fully ready for AI yet, but it’s much closer than many people assume. We’ve already seen how quickly Nigerians embraced mobile money and fintech; not because people were chasing technology, but because those solutions addressed real problems. I believe AI can follow a similar path if it’s designed around local needs rather than simply replicating solutions built for the UK or the US.

The biggest challenges remain infrastructure, particularly reliable electricity and affordable internet access. There’s also a trust and knowledge gap, as many business owners still don’t fully understand what automation can do for their day-to-day operations.

That said, the opportunities are enormous. Nigeria has a large number of SMEs, and they are exactly the kinds of businesses that stand to benefit most from automation because they operate with limited resources, and every hour saved has a direct impact on productivity and profitability. With Diaspora Moni, for instance, part of what we addressed was the disconnect between people living abroad and businesses or families back home. Automation helped make that entire experience faster and more seamless. I believe the biggest opportunity lies in connecting professionals like myself, who have gained technical experience abroad, with the task of solving real problems at home. The future of AI in Nigeria won’t be driven by flashy innovations, but by practical systems that solve everyday business challenges.