According to a report by Harvard Business Review, artificial intelligence is helpful for businesses in three major areas, namely – automation, data analysis and customer and employee engagement.
The above-mentioned report makes it clear that enterprise AI is indeed helping companies reach their business goals faster with utmost efficiency by reducing operational costs and improving their bottom line in various ways. Intelligence demonstrated by machines are enabling businesses to streamline business operations and hence, increase productivity.
Enterprise automation is the process of reviewing the business procedures that are currently manual but being replaced by digital, automated, and intelligent alternatives using AI and machine learning technologies. Switching from traditional, manual business processes to business process automation solutions can be tricky. But an automated enterprise stands a much better chance to gain on multiple fronts than a traditional, non-automated enterprise.
Role of AI In Business
This article enlists 5 reasons why investing in enterprise AI should be your first priority when it comes to business growth!
1. Understand and Engage Better with Your Customers
Customer engagement is an area where AI is extensively used for building and maintaining healthy relationships with current and potential customers via automated communication. For example, when a potential customer visits your website and they have concerns regarding a product or service, they expect quick response from the customer support and if they don’t get that, they may simply leave your website and jump to another.
To solve this problem, chatbots are used to facilitate 24*7 customer support and interaction. They are also used as virtual help desks in that if your visitors have queries, they can input their questions in the chat box and get quick and precise information. This experience leaves a positive overall impact on the customer and makes them more likely to stay with the company.
2. Targeted Marketing Using AI Leads to Brand Loyalty
In addition to providing round the clock information and support via chat boxes on websites, enterprise AI can also help in better informed marketing and branding initiatives. For instance, businesses can leverage enterprise AI to enhance their customer experience by sending personalized newsletters and tailored recommendations to their website visitors. This makes customers feel cared for and increases your chances of building lasting relationships with them. Happy customers are more likely to return which leads to higher customer retention rate for your company.
In marketing, it helps to know more about who your customers are, what their needs and goals are. Another use of AI in marketing is seen in building customer behavior mind maps. Customer behavior mind maps are made by analyzing customer behavior patterns such as how they interact with your website, what they are searching for and what buying decisions they make.
This is done by using big data analytics and it allows businesses to learn crucial information about how their customers like to be treated. Using this information, businesses can predict the buying tendencies of each customer, send personalized and accurate offers and drive more sales.
3. Better Employee Retention and Efficient Recruitment
Recruitment and employee retention is an important part of every business, in every industry. But having thousands of employees to cater to and receiving tons of job applications makes it harder to maintain high standards of practise.
According to a study by The Ladders, recruiters spend 7.4 seconds on average to skim each resume.
While it doesn’t seem like a lot of time, it can add up rather quickly if you have tons of resumes for a job vacancy. Ensuring that each candidate gets a fair review can become tough in such a situation. Thankfully, AI can help with optimizing the hiring process. AI based software can scrutinise the CVs of multiple candidates at once and choose the right candidates based on their qualifications and experience. This is done by keyword matching, i.e., by finding the relevant keywords on the resume. This eases the shortlisting process for HR recruiters and they have to spend way less time in manual discretion for each CV and focus on most suitable candidates for further interview process.
Apart from that, AI based enterprise automation platform help in reducing the workload for employees. It is used to handle routine tasks and addressing FAQs form users, saving time for human resources to focus on creativity, strategizing and optimizing other important initiatives.
4. Revenue Forecasting and Decision Making
Businesses need revenue forecasting to drive their financial performance. But decision makers are often faced with key challenges such as using outdated spreadsheets which need manual input from various sources such as sales, finance, and operations etc. This approach is not just cumbersome but also prone to errors as people are prone to making biased assumptions.
Decision makers need more accurate revenue forecasts to make better budgeting and investing decisions for the financial health of a company. Management needs a consolidated global view and that too more often than traditionally possible. At this point, AI comes in to aid as it helps companies with agile, intelligent and accurate forecasting.
AI based revenue forecasting is done by deploying machine learning algorithms that can cut down on cycle time and effort. Such AI driven algorithms can provide accurate forecasts and even give early warning signals incase of anomalies. This new and improved way of forecasting gives confidence to the management about allocation of resources.
For example, Levis recently leveraged Wipro Holmes, an AI solution, to improve its revenue forecasting with 99% accuracy, and made a significant improvement in its financial planning and analysis process. As a bonus, it also freed the staff for doing valuable tasks such as reducing cost of goods sold and pricing strategies.
5. Data Mining and Data Analysis
According to Harvard Business Review’s The Latest Research: AI and Machine Learning, in 2018, one of the most common types of projects (38%) that leverage AI is aimed at getting valuable insights through data mining.
The saying – data is the new oil is indeed true in the present world as both people and companies heavily rely on data. AI uses smart algorithms to collect, organize and analyze large volumes of data for extracting implicit patterns faster than the smartest human data analyst. This feature is critical for enterprise data management as they deal with scores of transactions per day.
A famous example of AI where it is used for predictive data analytics is Netflix. Users get personalized recommendations based on their past watching habits courtesy the AI driven algorithm. This system helped Netflix boost their engagement with the users and lower cancellation rates as reportedly 80% of what users watch is based on the recommendations.
Such examples are proof that AI is helping businesses not just sustain but boost their profits in the long run.
Conclusion
There are numerous reasons to invest in enterprise AI. What is mentioned in this article is just a glimpse into the world of possibilities that companies can find themselves in when they choose to invest in AI. Enterprise automation platform implementation can seem like an uphill task, but taking a sizable chunk of the challenge can help companies make the transition from manual to digital in a practical way. Once all the departments are automated on a large scale, the real potential of enterprise AI can be realized.
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