There’ve been years of hype about the invincible power of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Still, a large gap between what AI promises and its verity for business transformation exists. Tech companies have pitched AI’s capabilities for a long-time. Yet, for the majority of organizations, the benefits of AI continue to be volatile. Artificial intelligence in business projects is precedence for most companies though. There are several possible drawbacks for the unwary.
Artificial intelligence In Business
It’s not easy to gauge the proportion of businesses that leverage artificial intelligence today. Recent reports show that adoption rates fall somewhere between 20% and 30%. With adoption generally interpreted as ‘implementing AI in some form’. KPMG’s survey among 30 of the global 500 companies showed that while 30% of respondents used AI for a particular range of purposes. Only 17% of the companies implemented the technology at a large scale within the enterprise.
All these reports state that businesses’ interest in AI is growing. As reported by Gartner, the number of companies deploying AI-related technologies in the past four years has surged by 270%. Johan Aurik, partner at the global strategic consulting firm “Kearney” stated that when talking to executives, it’s evident that they all go to all AI conferences and are well-aware of what the technology can do.
Unleashing AI Promise
The promise of Artificial Intelligence is tantalizing for business transformation. The high growth that the technology can achieve is thereby specialists. They are to the point that it becomes hard for any executive to be still unaware of the hype. A large number of businesses are well aware of AI’s massive potential. As they plan to speed up adoption. One application of AI is the use of machine learning for both marketing and sales purposes. Which analysts estimate could generate around $2.6 trillion in value globally.
To further strengthen our argument in favor of AI. Let’s look at some of the key benefits that AI can offer businesses that choose to develop a relationship with it.
Benefits Of AI
Improvements in productivity and efficiency
Increments to the speed of business
Potential for expansion and growth
Improved customer service
Improvements in monitoring
Overall improved quality and decreased human error
Better talent management
Moreover, with the integration with natural language processing tools. Companies are now also considering the opportunity of creating chat-bots to provide potential candidates with personalized experiences and mentor employees that can track their progress and cater to their needs when it comes to particular tasks. AI has gone to the extent of actually gauging employee sentiment. Identifying high-performers for improved retention. Also determining pay scales based on employee performance.
Before we move on to an actual case study of AI integration. Let’s quickly get an overview of the areas of business that AI can be incorporated in.
Artificial Intelligence In E-commerce
- Building smart searches and relevance features. To help direct customers to exactly the kind of service/product they’re looking out for.
- Personalization as a service. Creating user-centric experiences that help customers feel like the content was solely created for them.
- Product recommendations and purchase predictions. The former caters to the customer experience. Whilst the latter helps businesses decide future productions accordingly.
- Fraud detection and prevention for online transactions to ensure customer safety.
Artificial intelligence In Marketing
- Recommendations and the resulting curating of content in line with customer needs/behavior.
- Pattern, image, and language recognition. To digest and collect any unstructured data from customers and create sales prospects accordingly.
- Ad-targeting leading to optimized real-time purchases.
- Customer segmentation to ensure that customers see what they want to see.
- Social semantics and sentiment analysis to better understand consumer behavioral patterns
- Predictive customer service to provide customers with feedback and suggestions. Even before they’re likely to look for it.
Artificial Intelligence In Business Management
- Spam filters to ensure that any unnecessary and potentially harmful data is kept away.
- Smart email categorization to help businesses categorize incoming queries. Business emails and any other communication.
- Smart personal assistants such as Siri, or Google Now that help businesses function effectively.
- Automated responders and online customer support. To ensure that customers can reach the business at any time during the day to log in their feedback/complaints.
- Sales and business forecasting leading to better-informed predictions. Setting up future directions for the business.
- Automated insights for data-driven industries. Which helps businesses keep track of all relevant indicators.
Why Kellogg Leverages AI?
Moreover, it’s not about handling and managing human actions. When it comes to data-heavy industries like manufacturing. The ability of AI to process and analyze large volumes of information also has the potential of optimal effectiveness through the supply chain. Artificial intelligence will generate the most growth in marketing and sales, and in supply-chain management & manufacturing in the upcoming time.
Biggest Barrier Businesses Face in Adopting AI
AI can be valuable for many industries. If it’s deployed with a particular targeted strategy. In other words, think bigger!
With the unlimited potential that AI has to offer. Businesses must strategize and plan accordingly. Keeping in mind their individual needs and requirements. Jumping straight into AI utilization without creating an action plan will often lead to less efficient results and a move ‘away from AI. Which is something you don’t want. Instead, utilizing your time and resources to better understand AI. What it can offer you and how you can make the most of it is the most important first step that you will have to take.
So, to AI or not to AI?
It doesn’t look like businesses are going to have much of a choice when it comes to adopting AI. It’s in no one’s interest to run short on the revolution that algorithms will bring. If you don’t embrace AI, you’ll be out of business. Though; it will take a few decades before the technology flourish. But, at the enterprise level, it seems that another ‘Artificial Intelligence winter’ is not going to happen.