5 Most Common Small Business Applications of Artificial Intelligence

The new and improved cosmos of application of Artificial Intelligence is not only enterprise-specific anymore. It is very much within the reach of small businesses. Businesses all around the globe are leveraging Artificial intelligence to automate business processes, eliminating inefficiency, and saving a lot of money in the process.

AI has evolved from vague to mainstream and businesses are touched by AI every day. It is estimated that, in 2018, 7.5 billion U.S. dollars will be spent on intelligent process automation.

But, generally, when we think AI, we think Google and Amazon, but, in this rat race of technological innovation, can your small business afford to lose out on all the benefits that Artificial intelligence brings along? Remember this — Your competitors won’t.

According to Forbes, 51% of small businesses believe AI is an important factor when choosing new technologies. In this article, we have noted down five areas where small businesses can take advantage of what Artificial Intelligence services have to offer.

Applications of artificial intelligence in business :

1. Customer service

From ordering pizza to appointment bookings to complaint generation, customers are satisfied and happy with not having to verbally interact and so are businesses. Acc. to Oracle — Eight out of 10 businesses have already implemented or are planning to adopt AI as a customer service solution by 2020.

This swift disruption will primary be a result of AI’s massive power to multi-task and provide swift replies to customer queries. Whether it’s AI augmented messenger bot or AI enhanced phone call bots or AI answering emails, it enables customers to communicate with simple voice or text commands in a way which is more accurate and faster.

AI can sift through millions of pieces of data to find out exact requirements and generate responses that matter to customers and thereby, create a personalized experience. Application of AI using bots will not only free up a lot of labor hours but also radically reduce average customer handling time and automate repetitive questions and ultimately improve customer satisfaction.

2. Making logistics smarter

Logistics companies are positioned in a way that they can benefit from AI in many aspects of the supply chain. Logistics with AI has the capability to handle a wide array of variables to churn out smart solutions. Resource management, route optimization, redundancy forecast, intelligent tracking are some of the many things that businesses can achieve with the intelligent automation solution and strengthen their logistical processes.

The supply chain processes generate a hefty volume of data every day, both structured and unstructured. With the help of AI, this data can be exploited to predict accurate demand forecasting and capacity, allowing companies to be more proactive.

Some leading companies are already harnessing AI for real-time decision making w.r.t carrier selection, inventories, vehicles, costs, warehouse locations etc. AI has the potential to significantly augment logistics activities from end to end in terms of operational efficiencies, cost savings, and increased customer loyalty.

3. Marketing

“Content is King but engagement is Queen, and the lady rules the house!”

In today’s era when marketing is more than a buzzword and every customer expects personalized engagements, marketers are in a sheer need to up their game. The aim of AI-powered marketing is to leverage customer data and Artificial intelligence to anticipate the customer’s thought process and pitch them personalized ideas. Also at the same time, AI will reduce time in RnD and take some load off marketers and delegating to machines.

With the advancement in technology and social media, customers can find absolutely anything that they want with a click (Thanks Google!) This is data in abundance and AI can use this data to analyze the search patterns and predict key zones where marketers should spend their energy on.

They can target customers demographically and deliver an ideal deal to him — a deal he can’t refuse. This sentiment analysis will also help the company to dramatically reduce their CPC and increase customer engagement in the process. Win-win for all!

4. Workplace transformation

AI is a boon to how modern businesses communicate and operate in their offices. Whether it’s hiring new candidates or eliminating repetitive administrative tasks, AI spells productivity. Workplaces are using bots to match candidates to jobs and communicate with candidates at least at the initial screening level.

They also let candidates schedule their own interview according to a time that works best for them and reschedule the interviews if needed. There are bots to schedule and record meetings, auto respond to emails, walking new employees through training and analyze performance.

With the help of AI, you are in no need of scrolling through calendars to find a date and set meetings or build manual reports or answer the same repetitive questions day in and day out. Also, use these tools to gather employee feedback and concerns so that the workplace culture is healthy and happy. With AI, you get more time to work on what matters and innovate!

5. Fraud detection

Fraud continues in loss of staggering amounts of money from businesses worldwide, with smaller organizations being hit particularly hard. Behind every fraud is a brilliant set of algorithms. Acc. to McAfee, cybercrime currently costs the global economy some $600 billion, or 0.8% of global gross domestic product.

With the help of machine learning, data scientists can build algorithms by discovering and matching patterns across large data volumes to effectively detect transactions that have a high probability of being fraudulent. Carrying out thousands of computations in a matter of milliseconds to detect suspicious behaviors that went unseen by the eye and discovering fraud patterns previously observed across billions of accounts increases the outlook of fraud detection exponentially. Also, the application of artificial intelligence will make fraud detection much faster and scalable.

-:: Before it ends::-

Artificial intelligence is the science of making machines smart. Gartner’s hype cycle made it very clear that AI will be a big part of business intelligence in the future. AI is no longer exclusive to self-driving cars. Businesses of any size can leverage it to transform their workplace, sales, marketing, and customer service and mount new heights.

In this booming data-dependent market, small companies can reach out to third-party custom software development firms to automate their business workflow coupled with Artificial intelligence saving time and money while staying put in the competitive arena of the emerging data-driven economy.

Originally published at www.binaryfolks.com.