Each of us interacts with artificial intelligence daily, one way or the other, and since it has become so commonplace, often, we don’t even realize it. Now, more than ever, the buzz surrounding artificial intelligence is at an all-time high. Because of this, many have debated the opportunities and threats to businesses’ growth and employment. Therefore, this article will walk you through the definition of AI and attempt to help you understand how you can leverage artificial intelligence to help your business grow.
Before we delve into the specifics of the impacts of AI on businesses, let us first define the term. Artificial intelligence is a broad term that refers to a computer or a computer-controlled machine or software programmed to mimic human action and thought. Because of its fast-paced advancement and development, businesses have chosen to begin taking speedy and intelligent applications of AI with hopes that it would result in a rich payoff.
What is artificial intelligence in business?
Many businesses today have started using artificial intelligence as a supporting tool for their development and growth. Business artificial intelligence involves using intelligent computer software to boost revenue, improve customer service, increase productivity, and drive business growth and transformation.
Why should businesses use AI?
Enormous data sets dominate most businesses in the twenty-first century that the feeble human mind cannot analyze, thus making it nearly impossible for humans to derive insights and provide recommendations and strategies efficiently. Therefore, it has become necessary for businesses to use AI to generate potential leads, understand customer needs and purchasing trends, and stay relevant amid the increasing number of competitors.
AI in business
As mentioned in the previous section, there has been a stark rise in using artificially intelligent software and tools to increase overall productivity and reduce operational expenses. Below are examples of AI technology in businesses:
AI in the customer service domain:
In the last decade, several companies have replaced humans with real-time chatbots. These chatbots can resolve complaints, cancel orders, place orders, and get information regarding a process or product quickly and efficiently, leading to improved customer experience, exponentially reduced costs, and increased customer care accessibility.
Business intelligence:
Business data is becoming increasingly available, making finding insights challenging. Hence, larger organizations have adopted AI to derive insights from the data. These insights can improve sales and marketing, create better strategies, provide customers with a more personalized experience, and aid in the corporate decision-making process. In addition, more and more companies are using tools like Microsoft’s Power BI to derive analytics and create predictions and forecasts.
Targeted marketing:
Based on the data gathered from customers’ online activities, companies can now use AI to predict and target specific customers to market a product to convert a lead into a sale and maximize revenue while reducing the overall cost.
Predictive analytics:
Marketing efforts and customer engagement are more effective when businesses can recommend products that retain the interest of their customers. Numerous SaaS platforms like Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, and others now use AI to gather information about customer interests and behavior and provide them with the best products.
Benefits of using AI in business
Businesses must deploy the right artificially intelligent technology to reap the best possible outcomes. These outcomes will help enterprises to:
Save time and money:
Businesses can now save time and money by using software robots or bots and optimizing repetitive or monotonous processes without the need for human intervention.
Increase productivity:
By assigning mundane, repeatable tasks to AI, workers can give their time to high-value jobs that cannot are difficult for AI to complete.
Better talent management:
Talent management now utilizes AI to reduce companies’ hiring costs and increase worker productivity by correctly identifying, evaluating, and screening top candidates.
Reduce error and increase accuracy:
With the use of AI, businesses have been able to reduce the frequency of errors caused by the limitations of humankind. The reduction in errors has been very beneficial for companies within the e-commerce domain, especially as AI can detect cracks or malfunctions in products that the human eye cannot otherwise see.
Enhance customer experience:
AI-powered solutions help boost customer experience, resulting in increased customer loyalty and sales by providing them with carefully tailored adverts and recommendations and, in some cases, helping them detect fraud.
Challenges to using AI in business:
Although there has been significant growth in the development of artificial intelligence applications, some factors have threatened this growth. These factors limit its use and include the following:
Data scarcity:
Smaller businesses that do not have much data cannot fully enjoy the limitless potential of AI.
We have a considerable amount of unstructured and unlabeled data, and with most AI applications requiring supervised learning on labeled data, this poses a challenge for its use in businesses.
Algorithm bias:
Some AI face recognition technology has proven to be ethnically, racially, and gender-biased. AI systems will eventually address such biases, but for now, they pose a significant barrier to adopting AI in certain areas. It illustrates how bad algorithms can perform when trained on partial data, one of the biggest challenges of AI.
Conclusion
Artificial intelligence in business environments reduces repetitive tasks, improves employee productivity, and enhances the customer experience from IT to sales. In addition, it detects potential crises at a level unachievable by humans. Hence, we believe that its early adopters with reaping the benefits, financially and in terms of their growth.
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