Artificial Intelligence (AI) investments among big businesses are on the rise. Currently, the percentage of businesses using AI grew by 270% from 2014-2019. Most of these businesses are large companies, but small to medium-sized businesses are also adopting AI technologies.
Whether people are aware of it or not, Artificial Intelligence permeates most of the services and applications they are using daily.
Current AI investments among big companies include the following AI applications:
- Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
- Autonomous Vehicles
- Machine Learning
- Machine Vision
- Natural language Processing
- RFID
- Robotics
- Touchscreens
- Voice recognition
AI is also extensively used in the medical industry – for diagnosing and recommending treatment actions for patients. These data-centric business solutions enable medical specialists to give accurate and more personalized recommendations.
In addition, AI serves a crucial role during the pandemic. It is used for proper screening and predicting the current and future patients, early detection and diagnosis of the infection, developing drugs and vaccines, and reducing healthcare workers’ workload.
Personalization in Business Interactions
Approximately 85 percent of consumer interactions in 2020 were done without the involvement of human beings. Chatbots and other platforms became more dominant as the pandemic raged and they include online sales and delivery, automated retail, and touchless engagements.
Many facets of eCommerce are affected by AI today as it quickly detects trends and clusters in consumer behavior, purchase patterns, and other commonly occurring data. In fact, AI now makes it possible to detect millions of such purchases per day, generating a customized experience for a single user.
More than 33 percent of marketing leads are lost due to a lack of follow-up. By effectively retargeting new clients, AI stops this from happening.
With the sales processes moving beyond time-consuming methods, consumers are now influenced by different media types. Using artificial intelligence integrated into CRM systems enables businesses to personalize solutions and communications that target the right consumers at the right time for the proper purpose.
AI-Powered Email Marketing
AI has been playing a significant role in email marketing for years. Email marketing generates steep revenues at $38 for every dollar spent.
Since most businesses have moved online, the competition for the market’s attention has become more cutthroat. However, intelligent strategies powered by AI solutions can level the playing field.
You need to start using data-centric email marketing plugins, allowing you to create unique email marketing strategies that yield the best possible results. If you are already using email marketing, upgrade to AI-powered plugins to stay competitive in 2021.
Those who could retain their brick-and-mortar stores start collecting customer email addresses using a POS (Point-of-Sale) system. Just make sure you do all your lead generation in keeping with privacy laws to avoid issues for your company. If you’re exclusively an eCommerce retailer, you can collect email addresses as visitors land or leave your site.
Modern POS systems and retail platforms can be linked to email marketing apps such as MailChimp. This way, you can create and manage a subscriber list, automate email campaigns, and generate detailed reporting.
Cashless Payment Solutions
A more straightforward way to go touchless amid the global crisis is to use cashless payment solutions. More and more consumers now use E-wallet payment platforms and apps.
A Mobile E-wallet helps you keep money and move funds to your bank account by scanning a QR code. It may be linked to a customer’s debit or credit account, depending on the business’s preference. To be vigilant, you can top up or fill just the cash you need on your E-wallet.
Any aspect of the transaction, including billing to receipts, is digital, regardless of customers’ devices. Cashless payment is also possible for microbusinesses in small communities through online payment apps.
Contactless Sales and Shipping
Contactless delivery is the new normal.
Drop-off delivery options are now a standard among logistics companies like DoorDash, Postmates, Instacart while eCommerce sites like Amazon, Shopify have long offered this feature.
Sales and shipping has dramatically increased during the pandemic as people observed social distancing and lockdowns all over. We will continue to see contactless delivery options rise in 2021.
For instance, self-driving vehicles and robots for grocery and food delivery are emerging around the world. Meituan in China, Walmart in the US, Ocado in Europe, and Rakuten in Japan are just some examples of AI-powered vehicle solutions helping businesses thrive in the pandemic.
We will see more companies comply with human touch preservation via artificial intelligence-based applications.
Business Automation
The rise of AI technology has led to work automation marking the new-age business revolution. The theme remains constant, from robots working in factories to automated hotel bookings and property technology – incorporating AI systems for business automation. The only difference is the AI applications employed.
With a growing trend in the automation of routine work, AI is quickly automating several routine business processes.
AI is one of the fastest-growing and popular data-driven technologies being used worldwide. From governments and large organizations to small online businesses, AI is being used by multiple entities across the world to automate routine operations, making way for human resources to focus on high-quality tasks.
Streamlining operations through AI solutions is a smart move for businesses to cope with the demands of a new normal economy. Artificial intelligence statistics from a recent survey show that more than nine in ten top businesses surveyed are already investing in AI technology.
Companies’ growing use of AI shows plenty of benefits, at the top of which is business productivity. 54 percent of business executives claim that AI adoption within their work led to an increase in productivity. Such effective use of AI also helps with better and more accurate decision-making within organizations.
Distributed Teams and Remote Operations
Remote working has been around even before the pandemic. However, the crisis pushed remote working and distributed it into the forefront in 2020. From government offices to private companies, everyone had to adjust and find ways to keep operations ongoing.
The reason for this is because the pandemic remains to be controlled.
Another reason is the dramatic decrease in revenues for most companies affected by the lockdowns.
A third reason is that distributed teams cost less than a full-on, on-site staff. As the economy begins to recover, more and more businesses discovered a remote work setup’s glories mention they will keep these newly-adopted work setup.
Even employees and freelancers themselves find the remote work setup most suitable for them when preservation of health and safety is critical. Mobile apps to increase productivity at home multiplied to answer the demand for remote working.
Video conferencing has thus become a norm – Zoom rose rapidly as a videoconferencing platform, outranking Skype, Google Meet, and other messaging apps because of its features that were quickly able to accommodate the exodus of professionals and students coming its way. Although it experienced security and technical issues with the sudden jump of its users, it bounced back real quick and made the app more secure, able to accommodate even large-scale webinars from around the world.
Many new ventures are emerging in the remote working sector. Startups Bluescape, Eloops, Figma, Slab, and Tandem have all provided
Visual collaboration platforms are also on the rise, enabling teams to interact, create and share content, monitor projects efficiently, conduct online employee training and run virtual team-building activities. Such examples include startups Bluescape, Slab, Figma, Eloops, and Tandem.
Micro-SaaS companies in the new normal economy are also increasing, most of which integrate Artificial Intelligence and machine learning solutions to improve modern businesses.
CONCLUSION:
The growing use of AI isn’t just widespread in businesses. As the technology goes mainstream, consumers worldwide have become more receptive and accepting of it.
Businesses need to work on communicating how they’re using AI within their organizations – despite the growing acceptance of AI, many consumers remain wary of how businesses are using the technology. Only 54 percent of consumers claim they trust companies to use the data collected from AI in a way that’s beneficial to consumers.
To boost small businesses, owners must be open to AI adoption and integration – the increasingly widespread use of AI is boding well for SMEs (small to medium enterprises) because it is becoming more accessible and affordable in many ways.
If customers are willing to use AI-powered solutions for a better experience, then all the more the businesses should.
Keep up with consumer demands and maintain their edge amongst their competitors.