How Artificial Intelligence Can Create & Process Data To Gain A Competitive Advantage

How Artificial Intelligence Can Create & Process Data To Gain A Competitive Advantage
5-Minute Read

Forrester Research reveals that 58% of businesses have considered AI technologies, but only 12% are actually using these systems. Should you join the AI revolution?

Whatever you do, don’t ignore the potential AI can bring you in terms of growth and productivity because that wouldn’t allow you to harness the power of innovation and its revolutionary concept. AI isn’t just limited to customer service and sales as is frequently the question, instead, AI can be expanded into further departments to magnify its benefits. By increasing the productivity and efficiency across all departments, you can grow your business that much faster.

Early adopters of AI have a great opportunity to pull ahead of competitors; especially in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) looking to build customer bases. AI technologies don’t just act as a differentiating factor amongst SMEs, but they also grant you the opportunity to compete with industry giants.

Market Insights

Data can be considered as the raw material of the digital economy. But much like raw materials, it is rendered useless without the specialised machinery used to extract and process causing it to be stored in some vast cloud databases. Artificial Intelligence would sufficiently provide the resources needed to extract, analyse and interpret data, processing billions of data points in a matter of minutes – it learns, it adapts; maximising your efficiency. Used in conjunction with marketing, it can provide powerful insights in staying ahead of the game – Around 70% of people surveyed expect incumbent competitors in their industry to use AI to gain an advantage.

Data-Driven Marketing

Marketing departments are continuously building on intuitive and immersive strategies to appeal to new customers. The big data trend in analysing marketplaces allows businesses to compile exhaustive amounts of data on buyer behaviour and their consumption methods. Like market insights, without AI, businesses have no real way to parse it. Adding AI into the mix provides accurate predictions on market trends and qualified leads which would enable businesses to segment and build audiences around data-driven analytics and data modelling. By interpreting future actions, you become flexible in adapting to the customer’s journey so that they can receive the right offers and content at the right place at the right time. AI can even automate emails, close sales, offer personalised products and predict customer sentiment – streamlining your business.

Babak Hodjat, co-founder and chief scientist at Sentient Technologies, tells Investor’s Business Daily. “It will become so ubiquitous that we won’t even call it AI anymore.”

 

Systems Automation

The rise of business process automation has grown in relation to the development of smart technologies. Forbes found that 70% of respondents were personally looking forward to delegating the more mundane, repetitive aspects of their jobs to AI. The integration of AI technologies is automating routine processes the same way industrial era machines automated physical labour. From booking systems to chatbots to emailing systems, AI is accelerating our growth prospects.

Sales & CRM

Imagine there was a technology out there so sophisticated that it knew all the leads and deals you were working on just by analysing your calendar, email and phone interactions – That’s AI in action. The software builds, monitors and analyses your pipeline so that you can focus on conversions rather than manually imputing data. Essentially, AI can be considered as your sales assistant by compiling necessary data and automating your CRM systems. Potentially, it could produce targeted information gathered from market insights, subsequently producing predictive forecasts.

Staying Ahead of The Game

Implementing AI technologies are no different to deploying actionable data or even making the switch from paper-based systems to email and digitised frameworks. The key is to develop the right mindset and adopt a step-by-step approach to each step. AI applications are learning to gain efficiencies over time. Businesses will be using these kinds of apps more and more in the coming years and it is up to you to keep up with your competitors; the sooner, the better. AI is only just beginning to scratch the surface of what can be achieved within the business landscape.