How AI Is Changing All Business, Not Just Big Business

When it comes to the next big tech revolution in business, there’s often an assumption made by small and relatively humble business owners that it’s not going to have anything to do with them. After all, how could it, be if you don’t have the funds that allow big businesses to invest in these technologies? However, when it comes to AI, there are already low-cost uses for the technology on the market, and many of them are already being adopted by small businesses. Here, we’re going to look at some of the many, many ways that AI is already changing the way that we do business.

It’s automating all kinds of work

One of the biggest benefits of software of any kind is its ability to take some of the load off of your shoulders. There is already a ton of process automation built into the business software that we use, and AI is only improving this process, allowing businesses to keep automating functions and tasks, which then frees up their time to use on tasks that require a little more human ingenuity and effort. One way that a business can make good use of its time is through AI-powered tools like this alternative to fireflies. Tools such as this automate your meetings by recording, transcribing and summarising your meetings. There are going to be more specific examples of how AI automates tasks below, but a lot of business software is already using AI for this purpose more broadly, too.

It’s doing customer service

One of the first ways that AI was broadly adopted by businesses of all sites was the role that it plays in customer service. If you have a business website, then there’s a good chance you want to make sure that you can help the visitors that land on it, especially if you can increase the likelihood that they stay around and get in touch or buy something directly from the site. Chat widgets can be a very useful way to make your assistance more broadly available to them, but you might not have the manpower to be able to chat with every visitor. AI chatbots have been fixing this issue, becoming more and more sophisticated in how they can use on-site references to help, and even use the visitor’s browsing history in the site to offer more relevant answers.

It’s writing copy

One of the most broadly publicized uses of AI lately has been how AI chatbots are developing written content and answers to questions in increasingly sophisticated and detailed manners. This has revolutionized the copywriting side of marketing and content creation. There is still a need for a pair of human eyes to look over AI-generated content, as it can sometimes lack the correct nuance, include factual errors, and some online tech platforms, like Google, can detect and will penalize purely AI-written copywriting. But at the very least, it is helping make copywriters’ jobs a lot easier by giving them templates and materials to work with.

It’s making marketing sharper

One of the improving abilities of AI is its role in doing the hard thinking for us when it comes to deciding on solutions and strategies for business questions. One of the most important questions of all is “how am I going to reach and appeal to more of my target market?” To that end, the wide range of AI marketing tools available is becoming more and more useful, able to do everything from suggesting marketing content you can create to generating audiences to target with ads and keywords to use in SEO. As with copywriting, care has to be taken to monitor these for the results specific to your needs, but it’s becoming a lot easier to market more smartly thanks to AI.

Offering better analytics

Of course, both marketing and sales are going to improve with the more nuance and information that you can use at your disposal. This is one of the major reasons that analytics has become so important in these spaces. Predictive analytics insights are being greatly improved by AIs. There are already AI companies and solutions taking a deeper look at everything on social media, as well as SEO platforms, to get a better idea of what works in gaining engagement, allowing you to act on analytics not just of your own posts and pages, but based on the overall engagement across the entire platform.

It’s improving sales campaigns

Sticking with the realm of marketing, but more specifically, we can look at how automation AI is improving the sales process. For instance, it’s helping make better demand forecasts, allowing for accurate sales projections based on things like past client interactions with your products and the sales results for different periods to give you a better idea of how much you can expect to sell. As such, it can even flag when sales are likely to be lower than expected, which can in turn help to prompt you to invest in new sales strategies. AI lead generation has already been put into action by plenty of companies, as well.

It’s improving customer relationships

The ways that AI can sharpen your sales campaigns and can provide direct customer support through things like on-site chatbots are already instances of how your relationships with customers can be improved by its technology. However, customer relationship management tools play a much more central role in ensuring that you’re able to hit on customer needs with the best timing, to remember the context and history you have with each customer, and to even automate parts of the sales process. AI is being implemented in CRM software of all kinds, from improving the analyses of customer behaviour to automatically adjusting marketing and lead nurturing activities based on those analyses, which can allow your sales team to focus more directly on customer interactions.

It’s managing supply chains

Every business that deals in the manufacture or sale of physical products also has to think about the supply chain, both in getting the materials or products to them, as well as shipping them off to land in the hands of the clients or customers. AI is improving supply chain management in a wide number of ways. As with sales, it can be used to forecast the demand for certain items, making sure that you’re including what you need in your shipments, as well as the most efficient and effective times and routes to move your goods. This way, you can make sure that you’re optimizing your supply chains as best as possible, getting the most ROI from them.

It’s making for better investments

When you’re investing in anything new for the business, whether it’s the development of a new product, hiring specific staff members, or even investing in new technology, you want to know how likely you are to benefit financially from it. You want to know the return on investment you can expect and, to that end, cost-benefit analyses can be hugely beneficial. AI is helping businesses make these cost-benefit analyses for all manner of investments. While it can never 100% predict whether or not you’re going to benefit from certain investments, it’s an extra way to make sure that you’re investing your money in the safer parts of the business, rather than wasting it on aspects that have a small chance of paying off.

It’s improving hiring processes

One of the most important decisions you can make for the future of your business is your choice in who you welcome onto the team. AI tools can help with this in a wide range of ways, meaning you don’t have to spend as much time poring over resumes. One of the big issues with hiring processes is the sheer amount of work it takes, and spending too much time on the earlier phases, like looking through resumes, can reduce your motivation during the more focused time you spend with candidates such as during interviews. AI candidate screening is just one way it can help you narrow the focus of your hiring process, automating some of the more repetitive and demanding parts of the task so you can focus on what some might call the more important part of it.

It’s breaking down big data

Big data is another one of those tech revolutions that you might think is only for bigger businesses, but small businesses can benefit from big data, too. For instance, it can help you improve business strategies, research markets, better reach customers, improve promotion, and improve internal workflows. Unlike analytics, big data takes in data points from across a range of sources to lend a more nuanced and multi-faceted take on business problems and questions. Usually, data analysts are required to make sense of big data, since it does pull in disparate data from such a wide range of sources, but AI is helping businesses better read big data so that anyone can benefit from its insights, not just those who can afford to hire someone to do it.

It’s improving cybersecurity

With the increasing advancement of technology, there is always going to be a new range of threats that come with any new development. Cybersecurity threats are getting more and more sophisticated, as are the efforts to stop them. There’s a perpetual arms race between cybercriminals and those who are defending against them, and AI is starting to be used by cybersecurity experts to make sure that they’re always staying ahead of the foe. One of the ways that AI is being used in cybersecurity for even smaller businesses is that it’s being used to better identify threats and vulnerabilities that might better go unnoticed.

It’s reducing fraud

AI can make businesses a lot safer in different ways, too. One of the ways in which it can do that is by tackling fraud. Fraud can be extremely costly for businesses. It can also erode the trust of your customers. If they’re targeted by fraud through your business or by someone masquerading as your business, it can create a negative association with your brand. A lot more businesses are looking at how to reduce the churn caused by fraudulent interactions, and AI is helping businesses detect new fraud patterns, and to better see when certain transactions are suspicious, which can allow the business to get in touch with clients to make sure that they haven’t fallen for fraud. While this aspect of AI use is still relatively young, it is being worked on vigorously.

It’s improving accounting

The role that AI can play in automation isn’t just going to take care of the tedious day-to-day administrative tasks that are a low priority on anyone’s to-do list. It can help with some very important stuff, such as accounting. AI is already being used in accounting software to help make things more accurate and efficient. This includes the recording of data, organizing transactions, ensuring that accounts are reconciled, typing up expense reports, and more. While it’s important to make sure that an accountant, bookkeeper, or someone with an experienced pair of eyes is able to scrutinize and confirm the results that AI puts out, there’s no doubt that artificial intelligence is becoming more useful in the accounting world, even doing things like automating steps in payroll.

It’s taking care of quality control and assurance

Machine vision has been an important part of manufacturing processes for many years, ensuring that products meet certain specifications before they are shipped out and sold. Machine vision is a form of AI, one of the earliest to be adopted. It’s now getting improved even further with the adoption of vision inspection systems that provide high quality imaging data in a fraction of the time, allowing deep learning systems to be trained to a point of optimal efficiency in a short period of time. Now, products are being checked faster and in more detail, allowing costs to be reduced while improving the efficiency of manufacturing output. You might want a human pair of eyes to supervise and double-check results now and then, but both quality control and quality assurance have been falling more into the realm of AI for some time now.

It’s hard to tell how much of a role AI will play in the future of business, but it definitely will play one. Whether it’s the silver bullet to a huge range of questions and problems is another story.

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Author Profile

Adam Regan

Deputy Editor

Features and account management. 3 years media experience. Previously covered features for online and print editions.

Email Adam@MarkMeets.com