Business benefits of artificial intelligence
With widespread technology such as Google Home in our houses, Siri on our phones, and smart bots on websites to answer questions in real-time, AI has become commonplace in the market. From a business perspective, the benefits of AI holds much potential power, and business leaders are taking notice.
Widespread implementation is bringing artificial intelligence technology within the grasp of an increasing number of businesses every day. In particular, businesses keen on reducing operational costs, increasing efficiency, growing revenue, and improving customer experience are adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technology to achieve these objectives.
72% of executives consider AI to be a significant business advantage.
PWC
Advantages of artificial intelligence
In business, AI is already widely used for automation, data analytics, and natural language processing. Automation reduces recurring and monotonous tasks. Data analytics provides businesses with unprecedented insights, while natural language processing enables intelligent search engines, chatbots, and increased accessibility for customers.
Automation
Automation has a singular purpose – to perform repetitive, labour-intensive tasks. Consequently, automation allows employees to focus on more critical, creative type tasks which require human judgement.
For businesses, automation, or more specifically, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), uses software robots (bots) or AI/digital workers to drive automation of business workflows and processes.
RPA has made significant inroads into several industries to drive efficiencies. For example, RPA has automated banking and finance processes, mortgage and lending processes, customer care, eCommerce merchandising operation, OCR application and data extraction Processes.
See also: How to boost your e-commerce sales with these 4 crucial customer service trends
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Natural Language Processing, is used to support computers to understand and interact with humans. NLP aims to read, understand, and make sense of human languages in a manner valuable to the business.
With a need to communicate before, during, and after a sale, person-to-person interaction is vital for most businesses. NLP technologies can log and interpret the data generated during the transaction lifecycle.
Countless opportunities exist for NLP. For instance, tracking, facilitating and analysing thousands of customer interactions through the use of language translation, grammatical accuracy applications, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) applications, and virtual assistant applications.
See also: How technology can drive small business transformation
Artificial intelligence benefits for business
AI has the limitless potential to propel businesses forward. Used wisely, the benefits of artificial intelligence to business are immense:
- Workflow/process automation – Through the use of software robots (bots), companies can optimise process, routine and repetitive tasks to be automatically completed and without human intervention.
- Enhance creative tasks – Free people from repetitive and routine tasks, allowing them to spend time on creative functions.
- Increased precision – AI is capable of providing more accuracy than humans. For instance, in an industrial environment, AI enabled machines can make decisions.
- Reduced human error – With AI, businesses can reduce the fequency and number of failures caused by limitations in human capabilties. This is particularly beneficial for production lines and product pricing for e-commerce. AI can be used to detect, via infrared sensors, cracks or defects in parts that cannot be detected by the human eye.
- Reduction in time spent on data analysis – AI allows the interpretation and exploitation of the data obtained from production to be actioned in real-time.
- Predictive maintenance – It allows to maintenance of the industrial equipment to be conducted based on the times and condition of operation, thereby increasing its performance and life cycle.
- Predict performance – AI applications could help determine when you may achieve performance goals, for instance, response time to helpdesk calls.
- Predict behaviour – Machine learning algorithms to analyse online habits to allow tailored product offerings, detect fraud or to target relevant adverts.
- Improvement in decision making – The availability of more structured information, allows each of theindividuals in charge to make decisions in a faster and more efficient manner.
- Control and optimisation of productive processes and production lines – Through AI, processes can be made more efficient and error-free, thereby obtaining increased control over production lines in the business.
- Increased productivity and quality – The utilisation of AI technologies, increases workers’ productivity and enhances the quality of the work they conduct. Having more information available to them, enables workers to obtain a more focused view of their roles and make more informed decisions.
AI for business
Artificial intelligence can potentially change the way your business operates. For companies looking to leverage AI and reap significant rewards, the first step is to look at which parts of your current business operations can be digitised. Instead of starting AI adoption with AI, businesses should consider existing digital tech within their organisations, which is likely to be collecting underutilised data.
Unused data may provide insight, such as seasonal variations and market demand trends. Thereby allowing businesses to hire and operate with more predictability, helping forecast future costs as well as streamline tasks for accounting.
However, businesses should bear in mind that artificial intelligence (AI) is an emerging technology. As such, it is evolving at a rapid pace which may present unexpected challenges. To understand these challenges in more detail, read more about the risks and challenges of artificial intelligence in business.
