Nowadays, artificial intelligence is no longer a fantasy, but a real tool for business development. But is it worth trusting it, and which companies are already using artificial intelligence? We will tell you in this article.
Did you know that the amount of information created over the last 30 years is equal to the amount of information created over the previous 3 millennia? And this is not the limit – the amount of information is constantly growing. In business its streams are simply huge – customer demand for online gambling in the Philippines, sales statistics for each region, inflation rates, production efficiency levels, the number of customer service calls… In any business sooner or later there comes a point when it simply becomes unprofitable to process information flows manually – while you are working on statistics for October, it’s already November. Business analysts see salvation in artificial intelligence.
Few numbers: the number of AI companies is growing about 5 times every 4 years. Approximately $31.7 billion has already been invested in machine learning. By 2022, BigData and business intelligence revenues are projected to be about $274.3 billion worldwide.
Machines are much faster than humans at processing vast streams of information and predicting decisions based on them. The use of artificial intelligence in business is not just a trend, but a necessity that helps you develop faster and get rid of mundane tasks in favor of more important ones. Put the tedious activities of data processing, reporting, and forecasting on machines, and get down to business development based on those forecasts.
Is It Worth Trusting?
Business executives who have never dealt with artificial intelligence before, often doubt – is it worth trusting a machine at all? After all, it is not a person, and how does an artificial intelligence make its predictions? It can’t think for itself.
It is enough to study, at least superficially, how machine learning works. Any service based on artificial intelligence is not born “smart” from the outset. Before that, it goes through a kind of training – based on given algorithms and a huge amount of information, it finds patterns, classifies data, and “remembers” the right and wrong answers. For example, analyzing terabytes of data on purchases in a particular supermarket, the computer learns to determine what products are purchased most often, what store customers aged 25 to 35 usually buy, what else they often buy together with milk of a certain brand, etc. The more data processed, the “smarter” the machine becomes.
There are several types of machine learning, often used in a hybrid form. We won’t go into them in detail in this article – it’s a very big topic. We just want to show that artificial intelligence is not something vague and unpredictable, but quite the logical behavior of machines acting according to a given algorithm. And, naturally, artificial intelligence can be trusted. After all, its main advantage over the human brain is the speed of information processing.
What Tools With Artificial Intelligence Can Be Used in Business?
Products for Сybersecurity
Protection from cyber scammers and phishing programs is one of the most important options for business. And artificial intelligence can help. AI-powered services are programmed to anticipate and prevent attacks – they monitor unusual behavior of programs, sources, or files, compare it to that of safe resources, and block if the activity seems suspicious.
Sales Statistics and Customer Demand Forecasting
Loading AI-powered software with sales data produces detailed reports and even forecasts of buying activity. By generating these reports regularly you’ll be able to track how customers react to certain promotions, how their demand changes depending on the season, etc. You don’t have to sort through the data yourself – just upload it to a special service with AI, such as Microsoft Power BI. That way you can not only regulate the release and sale of your products but also make customized offers to customers.
Automating Customer Service
Support departments are constantly having to answer mountains of one-type questions, many of which can be solved in two accounts, while complex problems are waiting for their turn. To prevent this from happening, you can put a bot or an autoresponder, which can prompt simple information, on the initial contact with the customer. If the bot is unable to resolve the customer’s issue, it can direct the customer to the exact department where it will help. Such autoresponders are used, for example, in the banking sector or at telecommunications providers.
Can Artificial Intelligence Tell Me How To Work?
On the opposite side of the aisle from incredulous entrepreneurs are business owners who are convinced of the miraculous power of artificial intelligence. They are confident that once they start using AI in their business, they will immediately get all the answers to their questions and a clear development plan for the coming years.
If such a service existed, it would be a miracle, and all businesses would become profitable. But for now, the entrepreneur is still the main thing in the “entrepreneur – AI” interaction. Yes, you can use the full power of artificial intelligence, but only you determine what kind of data you want to get and how to apply it to your business. Set goals first, and then connect the smart services. What might be such a goal:
- Modernize your marketing strategy based on your customers’ interests;
- Reconsider logistics in favor of more profitable solutions;
- Determine which outlets are most and least effective;
- Identify which of your company’s resources need strengthening;
- See how your customers are enjoying the new product;
- etc.
After defining the goals, all you have to do is upload the necessary data to the service and get analytics or forecasts.
To Summarize: What Can Artificial Intelligence Do?
- Process huge layers of any data;
- Work with disparate data from different sources, bringing them to a “common denominator”;
- Produce clear analytics or forecasts based on the processed data.
Thus, artificial intelligence is just a tool for the development of your business. But a very powerful tool, because its main role is the fast processing of large amounts of information with which you can immediately work. This allows for faster decision-making and frees up valuable staff time for more important and complex tasks.
How Companies Are Using the Power of Artificial Intelligence
Let’s briefly look at a few case studies on the use of AI in different areas of business.
Banking
Morgan Stanley is in the business of financial consulting. And to make decisions easier, the company has developed its intelligent platform. It processes the client’s goal, compares it with the available data in the database, and suggests the most advantageous investment strategies. Intelligent solutions are also used in working with loyal clients – the services analyze client behavior, identify their needs, and offer the most appropriate products and services based on this.
This solution helps process customer inquiries much faster. It used to take weeks to prepare a personalized offer, but now it only takes a couple of days. In addition, the platform helps customers make personalized offers based on their interests – for example, by offering to invest in a promising new IT startup if the customer is interested in that topic.
Call Centers
Another area of AI application is voice assistants. Assistants can easily handle simple tasks for users – check account balances, make a request to reissue a card, trace a suspicious call. Telecommunications providers, large marketplaces, and delivery services are gradually switching to voice assistants instead of the operator.
Car Manufacturing
Bosch uses artificial intelligence to develop autonomous cars. One of the guarantors of the safety of such cars is their ability to evaluate road conditions. The assessment takes place using sensors that are programmed based on the Azure Data Explorer intelligent solution. The sensors are “trained” to determine the car’s behavior in certain weather conditions based on a gigantic amount of real-world data about the car’s braking distance, skid angle, and other parameters in snow, rain, broken road, etc. In operation, the sensors can instantly predict the car’s behavior on the road and prevent negative consequences.
Training sensors with artificial intelligence has made it possible to significantly reduce development time. If previously it took months to process information about weather conditions and vehicle behavior in one region, now it only takes a couple of weeks.
E-commerce
Contextual and targeting advertising is especially important in online commerce. Artificial intelligence is capable of predicting conversions by tracking user behavior on the site and in ads. Thus, an application with AI will help avoid targeting the user with “unnecessary” advertising and warm up their interest when it is necessary.
Real Estate
The progressive growth of real estate transactions makes artificial intelligence simply a necessity in this area. AI-based applications can process a lot of information about the current state of the real estate market and produce forecasts, help realtors set adequate prices, and analyze the market in general.
Instead of a Conclusion
Thus, tools with artificial intelligence are our indispensable assistants in business development. Of course, you should not take them as a magic wand against all entrepreneurial problems, but artificial intelligence can significantly relieve your team and get answers to strategic questions in the shortest possible time.
