Artificial Intelligence (AI) is gaining prominence in everyday applications, including in business and enterprise. No longer the exclusive domain of academia and tech giant’s pet projects, AI is increasingly having a large impact on companies around the world.
In fact, a 2017 survey by PwC (.pdf) found that 72% of business leaders who responded considered that AI will be the “business advantage of the future”. AI’s potential will leave few operational areas untouched. Read on to get a taste of how AI is set to transform companies around the world.
Automating Industry and Logistics
AI is in large part data-driven. AI algorithms function by “learning” from large datasets, and by analysing data – even in real time. Advanced manufacturing operations and logistics networks generate enormous volumes of data that can be analysed by AI algorithms. While humans can also digest these data streams and come to conclusions, AI can do so far faster and more intelligently.
In reality this means that in logistics, routes can be planned with great efficiency and adjusted dynamically to new facts on the ground, without the need to wait for humans to come to conclusions. In manufacturing, AI will ensure that factory processes are perfectly optimised with speed, cost efficiency and safety in mind.
While it is true that AI capabilities have improved, it is also the advances in connectivity that is driving AI capabilities in industrial applications. Always-connected IoT (internet of things) devices supply a constant stream of data that allows AI algorithms to monitor the facts on the ground, in turn utilising advanced algorithms to automate decision making.
Product Satisfaction and Revenue Growth
Finding products that are fit for its market is a common business struggle. Sifting through feedback to find patterns is tedious and sometimes deliver little results. Yet modern-day AI marketing tools can take raw customer feedback and interpret the data to deliver easily interpreted customer sentiments.
AI can also help businesses understand what advertising is more effective. By automatically analysing customer responses AI can ensure that businesses target the right value proposition to the right audience without wasting money on ineffective advertising.
The benefits push through to direct sales as well. With AI able to teach sales reps to become better at closing deals. AI does so by analysing call recordings and by comparing the strategies used by your sales team. Phrases used, time spent listening compared to talking, and more, are all interpreted by an AI algorithm which generates recommendations to make sales efforts more successful which makes revenue grow.
Intelligent, Digital Workspaces
On top of the dramatic impact on specific business activities AI is also set to bring broader benefits to how companies function and in how people work. For example, AI can dramatically improve office efficiency by analysing how workers utilise desks space. Algorithms can calculate the optimal amount of office space, ensure that heating and cooling is optimally adjusted and help managers plan office layouts that boost collaboration and teamwork.
AI can also help workers collaborate better. Traditional office software suites are evolving into products that can predict what are you likely to do in response to an email and suggest the next document you want to open. On a noisy conference call with a lot of participants? AI can block out unwanted background noise, enabling meeting participants to clearly understand each other.
A Cumulative Effect
Like so many digital advances AI won’t transform businesses by changing any single facet of the way we do business. Instead, expect AI to change today’s enterprises in so many individual areas that the overall effect becomes transformative.
Businesses can look forward to seeing processes, tasks and entire environments becoming more intelligent. Just as the internet revolutionized businesses by transforming everyday activities, AI is set to have a transformational effect by lubricating businesses via cheap, powerful and supremely intelligent computing.
