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When you hear “Artificial Intelligence” or “Machine Learning,” you’re more likely to imagine a bustling team of data scientists and engineers running IBM Watson or Google DeepMind.
The challenge for smaller businesses is whether these concepts will stay buzzwords or become essential to everyday operations.
Small and medium-sized organizations are discovering new methods to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve their operations. Automated services and predictive consumer data management are ways AI may help organizations improve their product offerings.
AI is being used in various ways by businesses to improve their operations.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around since the 1950s, despite its appearance as cutting-edge technology. You may hear AI referred to as “Machine Learning,” “Deep Learning,” or “Cognitive Computing”, depending on where you are in the discussion.
Let’s spend the next 15 seconds defining what we’ve learned about AI’s history and many aliases.
Merriam-Webster defines AI as “the ability of a computer to simulate intelligent human behavior,” and we’re going to leave aside the talk about self-driving cars and robots replacing people to focus on this basic definition.
In other words, it’s a means to make robots or computers think and act like humans. AI may produce human-like replies by collecting a large amount of data and formulating rules (an algorithm) based on human neural networks for problem-solving.
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How AI can help you operate a small business
Perhaps Artificial Intelligence techniques are only available to large corporations like Google or Apple. As large organizations pour money into AI research and development, it is becoming more readily available and less expensive for small enterprises to use.
Big corporations have been benefiting from Artificial Intelligence for a long time. AIaaS has recently been accessible to small organizations (AI as a service). Let’s have a look at some of the advantages for small businesses:
- For small enterprises to save up time, they may use AI to automate repetitive processes and analyze massive volumes of data.
- Long-term expenses are reduced by increasing productivity and freeing up resources to grow the business, decreasing the overall cost of implementing an AI solution.
- Improve customer service by utilizing AI better to understand your customers’ perceptions of your product.
- An AI system may assist small firms in detecting any suspect cyber behavior before it becomes a problem, allowing them to take preventative measures.
These are just a few of the advantages of using AI in your small business. It can assist boost productivity, efficiency, and the quality of your ideas.
You can use machine skills to make your business run more smoothly and increase your bottom line.
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Product Quality Assurance
Managing your brand’s reputation is critical if you drive or operate a manufacturing business. Manually monitoring and analyzing each product as it is manufactured, on the other hand, takes time and money.
As it turns out, Artificial Intelligence is a viable answer to this issue. The scanning and assessment of items may be automated using AI. However, if you don’t do it, you’ll regret it.
The program may find defects in your product and let you fix them before they reach the client using Machine Learning.
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Stronger sales
It’s impossible to talk about marketing without mentioning sales. There is so much connection between these two domains that it’s difficult to separate them in business.
Marketing and AI work hand-in-hand because Artificial Intelligence may be used to boost sales. As a result, it’s an excellent method to ease oneself into the field of Artificial Intelligence without becoming overwhelmed.
Because the presence or absence of a specialized sales staff at your company may depend on your work line, we will discuss both possibilities in the next pair of bullet points.
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Scheduling Workers
Management has a difficult time deciding who and when to schedule. You face the danger of having inadequate capacity if you don’t plan sufficiently, but you also risk disappointing your customers. You squander resources if you prepare too many staff at once.
AI can help you schedule your employees in the most efficient manner possible. A human can’t perform in the same amount of time that the program can achieve. Analyzing past peak timings and other variables might help with this.
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Reduce repetitive, mundane tasks
Many technologies exist that employ Machine Learning to aid in the selling process for those with a dedicated sales staff; it’s only a matter of where you need the support.
When it comes to scheduling meetings, are you searching for a solution to reduce the back and forth? Your staff may focus on more vital tasks instead of scheduling meetings with an AI assistant like X.ai.
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Expand your team with a chatbot
Even if you don’t have a full-time sales crew, many resources are available to you.
Chatbots, which show as pop-up windows as soon as you land on a website, are a popular sales technique that you may already be acquainted with.
A chatbot is an excellent addition to any website. It’s like having a full-time staff on call 24/7. Your consumers will appreciate the speedy service provided by solutions such as Whoson. Online chat is preferred by 53% of clients.
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Revolutionize human resources
As a last thought, we’ll mention human resources as a less apparent application area for AI (HR). Unlike sales and marketing, a company’s financial line isn’t directly affected by activities like candidate screening or staff communication. However, recruiting is a significant investment, and turnover may substantially impact your bottom line.
It is possible to sort through many applications using AI-based tools rapidly, so you can focus on those with the best chance of succeeding.
The use of chatbots, such as Talla, can save time by offering a series of questions depending on the criteria of the function, hence reducing the time spent on screening. After you’ve hired a new employee, you may utilize it as a knowledge base for frequently asked questions about the company’s policies, perks, and other details.
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Marketing
There’s no limit to what kind of firm you can have. On the other hand, your clients will get the wrong impression if you don’t properly promote your product. They may not even realize you exist at times.
AI may help with this obscurity issue by providing marketing techniques that are automatically generated. It helps identify the behavioral patterns that drew visitors to your site and prompted them to purchase. After then, it’s only a matter of repeating and scaling the process.
How to implement AI in small businesses
When it comes to incorporating AI technologies into their products and processes, we’ve found that the most successful of our clients take a similar approach:
View problems through the lens of AI
Machines are getting smarter. It is conceivable for humans to grasp how engines may use data to learn. This is the key to unlocking the AI potential of your company’s operations and data.
Start with something small.
Technology and new tools may be intimidating, no matter how user-friendly a piece of software is, due to the novelty of the newness and the change surrounding it. Consequently, it is worthwhile to conduct a pilot experiment with a high possibility of success.
Scale
The “network effect” favors Artificial Intelligence. As the amount of data processing grows, AI applications value them. Since accuracy improves, it’s in the firm’s best interest. A social network or chat app does not fit the bill.
What to look for in AI technologies for small enterprises
Let’s look at what to watch for when selecting an AI solution. If you’re looking for a solution for your organization, there are many options.
Before making a decision, keep in mind the following aspects:
- For efficiency, you need a solution that can be used by everyone on the team—ideally without the need for extensive training and onboarding. There’s little value in a technology that takes months to deploy and comprehend. When deciding on an AI system, ease of use should be a primary consideration.
- As your business grows, you’ll need a solution to keep up with it. Consider your growth strategy and ask questions in line with it when considering how readily AI technology can be scaled.
You’re looking for a solution that can help you from starting using a tool until you begin building complicated Artificial Intelligence models. - You need a tool that can do what you want it to do, and this is a huge one. Consider the tool’s capacity to conduct NLP, picture categorization, etc.
- You need a system that works when it comes to making accurate forecasts. Some solutions include information on guaranteeing that you obtain the most accurate forecasts, such as increasing the amount of training data or improving the labels. Other solutions give more accurate predictions than the recommendations provided by these solutions.
- There has been an enormous increase in Artificial Intelligence (AI). If you’re looking for a solution, be sure it’s devoted to staying abreast of industry changes and upgrading itself to reflect them.
The key to successfully integrating AI into your company is to choose a solution that checks all of these boxes. Find the AI solution that works best for your business.
When it comes to receiving the most accurate forecasts, Levity is an excellent option. You can simply use the workflow builder to construct new AI processes when you’ve finished training your AI model.
Simple AI may assist your small business without any coding or complication.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence has influenced and changed many businesses from small to even enterprise-level, but not all have been fast to welcome the impact and changes. Regardless of your stance, Artificial Intelligence is here to stay. There’s a good chance it’s already saving you time and money.
Our lives will be easier and more profitable due to this technology.
Even small businesses may benefit from Artificial Intelligence, even if they don’t have the resources of the world’s largest corporations. There is a wide range of apps that may be used by organizations of all sizes regularly. Your company will be able to cut down on waste and make more money, which should be a goal of any organization.
What if you can’t fight them, then you may as well join them? Adopt Artificial Intelligence and get the rewards.
