It is reported that the widespread adoption of AI will add about $15.7 trillion (£12.8 trillion) to global GDP by 2030. Most of that value won’t come from AI-focused companies though, but the implementation of the intelligence into existing industries by improving the quality of their product or service. Like most meaningful technological advancements, early movers will be the prime beneficiaries. Put simply, paying attention to how AI can benefit your business now will give you a huge advantage over your competitors.
AI is still in its initial stages of development, and therefore its adoption is currently tentative at best. However, more and more business owners have realised the extraordinary benefits AI has to offer and are keen to implement it into the day-to-day functions. While we have no way of knowing the full potential AI will ultimately reach, here we present the ways in which it is helping companies to grow currently.
1. Process and manage data
It is common knowledge that data in modern businesses is essential. There’s a reason you see so many ads on LinkedIn for data scientists and data analysts — the demand for experts in the field is abundant. But why, exactly? Well, when effectively integrated, data and analytics helps a business improve decision-making, foresee market trends, predict consumer behavior, and determine the ROI of its marketing efforts, among other benefits. However, in order to get the most out of data, you need to sort it correctly. Think of data like a mountain of unsorted lego. In that state, it’s not much use to you: it’s just a jumbled mess of potential. However, if you were able to organise the data into separate colours, shapes and functions, it will enable more effective use. You can build something remarkable.
This is where investing in AI is useful, specifically a type that can perform data matching, which is the process of comparing two different sets of data and matching them against each other. Often a company’s data comes from multiple datasets and has no common identifiers, which can lead to duplicates. However, data matching detects these, helping to cleanse your dataset. “Artificial intelligence offers a proprietary algorithm, lexicons, and a contextual scoring engine that works together to defeat the errors, inconsistencies, and challenges commonly found in contact and business data”, says 360Science, a Syniti company. In essence, solutions like 360Science’s intuitive matching platform layered over an intuitive UI that allows you to sort your gathered data accurately and quickly.
2. Develop marketing strategies
Of all business functions, marketing could have the most potential to gain from AI. The ability of a company to successfully promote and sell its products or services revolves around having empathy and understanding customer needs, matching them to products and services at the right time, and thereby convincing them to buy. AI can undoubtedly enhance this process. Through its management of data, as explored in the point earlier, AI is capable of sorting customers according to interests, demographics and even psychographics. As a result, you can target ads to them based on subtle activities such as browsing history, ‘likes’ on social media and even time spent on certain pages, which all helps to streamline the sales process.
Later in the marketing funnel, AI reduces the likelihood that customers will abandon their digital checkouts. It does this by assisting in retargeting campaigns directed at people who have recently left the browser on the checkout page, sending them emails to engage with the checkout page. Moreover, it allows you to offer attractive offers like extra discounts on cart products or free shipping in real time. In short, AI is a critical tool to grant potential customers awareness of the products and services they are actually interested in and could benefit from. By using AI, you lower cart abandonment and drive more sales.
3. Automate repetitive tasks
One defining ability of AI is in the automation of repetitive tasks using technologies such as RPA (robotic process automation). RPA will see widespread application for functions such as accounts payable, back-office processing and other forms of data management. Routine tasks associated with a large number of repetitive tasks such as wrangling together disparate datasets, harmonizing and standardizing tables before you can work with them, can now be automated, freeing up your time and resources to focus on more complex or creative endeavours.
One example of this is in customer service, as AI is capable of implementing top-notch speech recognition and natural-language processing in telemarketing. New advances in these technologies allow 80% of queries to a call centre to be dealt with through automated processes. Although many of us enjoy the personal touch of a human voice, the reality is that automated calls tend to have high customer satisfaction since people get their problems solved earlier. Similarly, the increasing use of chatbots demonstrates the potential of AI in customer experience. This ingenious software allows you to run an automated chatbot that customers can engage and interact with, helping to solve problems, suggest solutions and even convert leads into sales.
