Over the last few years, companies have been allocating a significant percentage of their budgets on IT; be it on development of new systems or hardware. According to Gartner (www.gartner.com) the worldwide spending on IT will reach about $3.5 trillion by 2017. This highlights the fact that how technology has reformed our lives and (still) has a huge potential to bring a massive revolution in the business world. Having said that, there will be only be a few technologies having the capability to transform how humans behave and interact; Artificial Intelligence (AI) being one of them. Slowly but surely such technologies have become part of our lives.
What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a relatively new concept which has rapidly transformed the way we interact with technology. According to Technopedia, “Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that aims to create intelligent machines.” In layman terms, it is the ability of machines to understand a problem and respond to it accordingly in the most efficient way. This concept of AI is fast becoming a reality at an exponential rate, as we already see Virtual Assistants like Siri to self-driving cars in use in today’s digital world.
How has it changed the business world?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized everything from the way industries produce, manufacture and deliver. It has influenced small & medium sized businesses as well. Search engines like Google, our browsing history and even Facebook & YouTube search option use algorithms based on AI ,suggesting options triggered by our usage pattern. Apps powered by AI not only deals with the basic customer service related queries but can also help to schedule meetings and itineraries. Google has also launched an AI system this year that can write poetry, now how cool is that?
How will it impact us in future?
Automation is on rise now! A lot of tasks performed by humans today could be replaced by computers in the coming years. As businesses worldwide would compete to grab share of this multi-billion industry, some will fail while others would succeed. Businesses which will grow would use AI to venture new opportunities by offering innovative solutions and add value to it.A lot of apps are already using AI to analyze buying patterns for consumers. However such apps are expected to perform even better in future. AI would help such apps to dynamically read marketing campaign responses and convert them into signals; helping marketers to adjust their campaigns accordingly. So, AI is just not about the Robots only! Its more do to with how fast and efficiently things can be done in real time.
How Small Businesses can prepare for AI?
Organizations of all sizes have to put in lot of thought to leverage AI in order to use it to their advantage. This applies more to small businesses as compared to big industries. The main idea is to adopt the whole AI approach with the right set of mind instead of abruptly switching to it.
Go Digital: This should be the 1st step towards preparing for the technological advancement for any business.
Customer Centric Experience : No matter how advance the technology becomes, we will always want to have that human factor available to us when it comes to customer interaction.
As the technology evolves, everything from e-commerce to a manufacturing industry to food business will have an automated process incorporated into it. However, what will add value to it would be right balance of human interaction and technological processes.
