Table of Contents
Artificial Intelligence is playing a big role in the transformation of modern business as it affects the most various industries, including warehousing, logistics, finances, education, and healthcare. However, not all businesses understand what exact value AI can bring to them, considering the number of myths circulating around this technology. This article will shed some light on the benefits that AI can bring to your business and the reasons why you might consider its implementation.
Automation of tasks
Task automation is one of the biggest perks that your business can get from AI technologies implementation. By delegating certain tasks to a machine, you not only make life easier for your employees but also receive a number of benefits.
First, there is increased accuracy of work. When specialists do their job, there will always be a chance for human error, despite how skilled and professional they are. But if the same task is performed by a machine, the possibility of an error decreases dramatically.
Second, a machine can do the same task much faster than a human. Thus, in addition to higher accuracy, you will also enjoy faster delivery.
And finally, automation allows you to assign tasks more wisely. While a machine can do minor or routine tasks, your employees can focus on more serious issues that require deep analysis and a thoughtful approach (though a machine can assist them in it too).
If you need an example of automation, the simplest one would be chatbots that you can encounter on almost any website. A chatbot does not only greet a visitor and provides them with information but is also capable of gaining customer insights, pushing relevant timely notifications, and much more.
As for more complex examples of automation, farmers use AI technologies to automate crop management (lightning, watering) and medical professionals use automation for faster data retrieval and processing and better appointment scheduling and billing.
Better customer service
In relation to the point above, Artificial Intelligence can also seriously boost your customer service, leading to a significant increase in revenue. Just think about it: AI helps execute operations in a faster and more accurate manner and provides customers with requested information in mere seconds. All that leads to increased customer satisfaction as clients are able to receive the needed information and services without the need to wait.
The most common example of using AI technologies for customer service is the use of chatbots that we talked about above. Another great example is personalized recommendations. With 58% of customers saying businesses offer them irrelevant products (as per SmarterHQ report), personalized recommendations not only bring a competitive edge but also help businesses retain their customers.
In addition to smart service offerings, AI helps improve your interactions with customers. By automating emails, online chats, and other means of communication, you make sure not a single customer is ignored and all of them receive relevant information at the right time and via the preferred means of communication.
Better management of processes
If we talk about such industries as logistics, agriculture, or transportation, there are hundreds of operations going on at the same time and employees have to keep an eye on each of them in order to successfully manage the whole process. What AI does is taking full responsibility for the management with the help of the following:
- Machine learning for better maintenance: an ML-powered system can notify operators about the needed maintenance or issue;
- Computer vision: a system can analyze a certain area and provide needed information. This is widely used in agriculture to manage and monitor crops and their state.
- IoT for data collection: with the help of sensors, a smart system can collect all needed information and successfully transfer it to the database for further analysis.
This is also very relevant to the healthcare industry. Every medical establishment these days has a software system that allows managing most of the processes in one place (i.e. management of EHRs, appointment scheduling, contacting patients, etc.). And if you add AI technologies to it, the efficiency of the system will grow significantly as AI will not only add automation but will automatically allocate the tasks in the most efficient way. An AI-empowered system can take full care of contacting the patients and reminding them of appointments or sharing health records across different departments, for example.
As you can see, Artificial Intelligence is capable of fully monitoring and managing your processes, providing you with valuable information in real time. But even if your business does not belong to one of the abovementioned domains, AI can still help you take better control over your operations.
Predictive analytics
For some businesses, especially in the sphere of finances, predictive analytics is a highly valuable tool. Predictive analytics (that falls in the AI technologies category) draws accurate forecasts for the future and helps with the following:
- Mitigate and avoid risks by understanding potential “risk areas”;
- Evaluate the potential profitability of certain actions;
- Understand how to grow the business by predicting its future state;
- Understand customers’ behavior and preferences, both current and future;
- Predict fraud by analyzing users’ behavior and identifying fraudulent patterns and actions.
Predictive analytics is based on machine learning technology. It analyzes massive data sets to identify dependencies and correlations and, based on these insights, is able to predict certain outcomes. This is especially useful for the companies in the spheres of lending, credit scoring, and finances, though retail benefits from predictive analytics too. By being able to predict what product will be in high demand and what product will be in low demand, businesses can adjust their stock and save both money and resources.
Digital security
There is no need to remind you how critical web security is. In case of a data leak or breach, a company will face major financial losses, not to mention a hurtful impact on its reputation. One of the ways to ensure security is using AI technologies.
Predictive analytics that we talked about above can be efficiently used to predict the possibility of an attack and the possible weak points. As well, many companies use Machine Learning to recognize fraudulent behavior and take preventive measures in response. In this way, you ensure the safety of your data and prevent any external and internal threats from happening.
One more way how AI contributes to security is by using biometrics for user authentication. It helps in facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, and voice recognition. Needless to say, this can be highly valuable both for organizations and for regular users (remember your mobile device authentication with the fingerprint?).
Big Data management
Despite being a buzzword, Big Data is something definitely worth paying attention to. By collecting and analyzing your Big Data, you can get valuable insights into the state of your business, potential areas of risk and opportunities, possibilities for growth, and market preferences. And the only tool capable of processing Big Data is AI – to be more precise, its subset, Machine Learning. Hence, if you want to uncover the value of your data, you will need to implement AI technologies in your processes.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence is a highly valuable asset for any business but it also requests significant investment of finances and resources. In order not to lose money and benefit from AI implementation, it is important to understand whether you really need it and what tangible benefits AI will bring to you. It may happen that you need to simply readjust your processes in order to improve them – but sometimes, the use of AI technologies is exactly what you need.
Therefore, your first step will be a thorough business analysis and definition of your business goals. Based on them, you can make a list of requests for a development team, find a reliable software provider, and take your business to the next level.
Comments