Can Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Transform Small Businesses?
According to a Gartner prediction, 70% of global organizations will be integrating AI into their workplace by the year 2021 to boost employee productivity.
•A 2018 survey conducted by V istage regarding the role of AI for small business revealed that 13.6% of small-tomedium businesses (or SMBs) are currently using AI technologies to improve their business operations and customer engagement.
AI Applications for Small Businesses
What are some of the current applications that is utilizing AI technology for small businesses? AI applications for small business are benefiting them in the following ways:
Improving Sales and Marketing Efforts AI tools for small business enterprises are certainly useful for extracting sales-related insights from customer data. For instance, the AI-enabled customer relationship manageme nt (or CRM) tools are enabling small business owners in analysing their customer feedback and accordingly adapt their sales lead generation activities.
Automate Customer Service and Communications
Through the use of automated chatbots or digital assistants that work 24Ă—7 around the clock, small businesses are elevating their customer service and communication without hiring and training a dedicated customer support team.
Improving Recruitment and HR activities Among the prominent benefits of AI for small business, AI technology is streamlining the entire employee hiring process along with improving the HR function through employee feedback.
Why are AI and ML Application s Important for Small Businesses?
Small to medium businesses (or SMBs) account for more than 50% of the total job creations in the U.S. and account for 40% of the country’s GDP.
AI applications for small business can be used to handle a majority of routine or repetitive tasks. With the increasing volume of business data being generated by organizations, AIbased tools can be used for advanced statistical analysis and deep learning for small businesses with budget constraints.
Why are AI and ML Application s Important for Small Businesses?
Be it for sentiment analysis or for tracking customer preferences through social media tracking, the implementation of machine learning in business is enabling data gathering from a variety of data sources, which can then be analyzed for key business insights. The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning for small businesses is largely enabling them to manage the shortage of skilled resources and manpower
Why are AI and ML Application s Important for Small Businesses?
For instance, in a December 2017 article by James Poyser, the cofounder of the inniAccounts (a small accounting firm), he talks about how his firm has succeeded in automating basic accounting and bookkeeping with the help of AI applications.
Considering the limited number of human resources that small businesses have, AI technology is crucial for them to manage their limited human capital more efficiently.
How can Small Businesses integrate AI and ML into their operations?
SMBs require a slow and structured approach towards enabling AI in their business operations instead of a rushed adoption process.
Integrate third-party applications that can boost the productivity of the current workforce.
Here are some of the steps that they can adopt:
Gradually move your business processes towards a more flexible working model with AI-powered applications.
Identify a common business problem that can provide a good ROI for its solution.
Adopt AI with the following 3-step process:
• Define your business expectation from AI based on your current business profile. • Measure your progress against relevant baselines. • Decide on the outcome of your experiment as either success or failure.
• On a similar note, machine learning for small business firms can help in improving their business processes through automation. • This is relevant from the use of machine learning tools like the Google TensorFlow and Spark MLlib that can process large volumes of data in various SME domains like manufacturing, finance, and healthcare.
Here are some of the benefits of machine learning in business enterprises particularly SMBs:
Provide valuable insights into customer behavior
Personalize customer service through the deployment of natural language processing (or NLP)
Provide relevant product recommendations
Improve business security
Improve SEO
How can AI help small businesses in the future?
• Despite the numerous AI applications for small business, the technology itself is in a nascent stage and offers tremendous potential for the future. • While leading companies like Microsoft and Google are investing in the research and development of AI-based systems, the future of artificial intelligence for small business success depends on how each of these smaller firms can adopt and customize AI-related technologies for their individual business needs.
As AI technologies become more accessible and affordable, industry leaders in the small business space must evaluate the multiple components of AI including robotics, machine learning, natural language processing, and machine vision to see which fits the best into their business model.
Conclusio n
Multiple market factors such as cost of investment and limited skilled resources in AI and ML technologies are limiting the benefits of AI for small businesses. However, it’s not feasible for small business enterprises to ignore the potential of these emerging technologies in the near future. Small business who do the groundwork and invest in AI technologies today will be best placed to benefit from these technological investments in the future world.
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