Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a popular topic in science fiction films for several decades. Today, it’s also a popular topic in the boardrooms of cutting-edge companies. AI represents not only a collection of impressive technical achievements, but it’s also a tool that can be used to increase productivity, improve workflow, save time, and create insights that a business never experienced previously.
AI is Here
The first step in determining whether artificial intelligence is capable of helping your business is recognizing that it’s already a regular part of our daily lives. When your phone predicts the next word in a text or a virtual assistant recognizes your specific voice, or a streaming service makes a recommendation based on your viewing habits, artificial intelligence is already helping another company serve its customers in an innovative way. In each case, AI is taking volumes of data, managing and learning from it, and ultimately making decisions regarding how to proceed in an interaction.
Whether that interaction is between a company and its customer, or between a network and an employee, AI can predict needs and improve experiences. Those benefits make it a valuable tool for businesses that are prepared to utilize it.
Weak vs. Strong
While artificial intelligence is a powerful tool in any form, it can be described as either “weak” or “strong.” Weak AI refers to its ability to follow a pre-determined set of directions based on variables. It can also improve its success rate over time, essentially becoming a better version of itself and following the directions faster and more accurately as it continues to work.
Strong AI adds the ability to develop its own processes and methods for improvement with little or no human guidance. The AI itself innovates, finding new opportunities and paths to achieve its goals. While there are real-world examples of strong AI, customers often interact with and benefit from weak AI.
Why AI?
A company that has never truly utilized artificial intelligence might not realize the benefits of incorporating it into their business. AI has many practical applications that can increase efficiency and add layers of value to an existing business model.
* Reduces human limitations.
Even the most capable individuals are prone to making mistakes and require time in order to make important decisions. Artificial intelligence can reduce error rates and execute decisions quickly, monitoring and adjusting results to gain desired outcomes. Utilizing AI for monitoring and decision making where appropriate, saves employees time and the company money.
* Informed decisions.
A skilled executive makes decisions using the data with which they’re most familiar and understand best. They use the information they gather to inform and guide their decisions after taking the appropriate time to evaluate what they can.
In contrast, artificial intelligence can evaluate all the data a company records and stores, including historical data spanning several years, and instantly come up with a decision based on the necessary criteria. AI can also execute that decision in real-time, and adjust as circumstances change. It allows a company to process data in ways that would simply not be possible with human analysis. And it can be done 24 hours a day, every day.
* Better user interactions.
When an automated system gets a customer to the right department the first time, and the responding employee has all their relevant information immediately, that experience will be both positive and productive. And when AI can predict what information an employee needs in the most productive and accessible format with all factors and weights already calculated, that experience improves productivity and worker satisfaction at the same time. AI can enhance the business experience with any user who is in contact with it, or the product of its work. Saving time also saves money and provides more value to customers leading to happier employees and increased business opportunities.
Are You Ready for AI?
In order to take advantage of artificial intelligence, your business needs to accommodate the infrastructure necessary to maximize its effectiveness. That includes enough hardware, storage, and network speed to get the most out of its potential. It also means your data needs to be comprehensive and easy to access, so every decision made by AI is an informed one.
Finally, you’ll need a plan to implement and utilize AI properly, so you get the most value for your investment. Will it be mostly for the end user, or your employees, or both? You might find that once your company is set up to realize its benefits, there are more applications for it than you envisioned originally. The plan needs to be specific but flexible, so you can take advantage of opportunities to save time and money with AI as they become available. It should also include the foresight to recognize more uses for AI as the business expands or adjusts operations in the future. By ensuring the organization is prepared for AI today, it will continue to provide benefits tomorrow and beyond, even as business conditions change.
What’s the Next Step?
While many professionals recognize the value of artificial intelligence, they don’t necessarily know how to go about evaluation and implementation. There are many steps between considering AI features and seeing them work in a live setting. Imperium Data can help you through each and every one of those steps to ensure that the decisions are sound and make sense for your business. Use our contact page to begin the conversation.
