Is Artificial Intelligence the Future of Business?

 To perform tasks on machines or systems, artificial intelligence (AI) technology mimics human intelligence. Currently, AI applications include chatbots, intelligent assistants, manufacturing robots, and self-checkouts, among others.

You may be wondering how artificial intelligence will affect your business. Is this the future of business artificial intelligence? According to research, the AI market will be worth $169.41 billion by 2025. IT and telecommunications, media and advertising, retail, healthcare, automotive and transportation, and banking, financial services, and insurance will drive this growth (BFSI).

The current state of AI applications in business.

Do you understand how to apply artificial intelligence in business? Businesses are currently utilizing AI in a variety of novel ways. The most common AI applications are automation, data analytics, and natural language processing (NLP). These three specialties have reduced the complexity of complex business processes while increasing overall labor productivity.

Automation

Repetitive work accounts for roughly one-third of all occupations. This repetitive work is typically monotonous, error-prone, and draining of creativity. Workers are liberated from repetitive tasks by automation, giving them more time to do higher-value work.

Analytical data

Data analytics is a subset of business intelligence that examines and analyzes business data. This data assists businesses in gaining insight into their operations, observing patterns, and discovering relationships within the data.

AI automates much of this work and aids in predictive analytics, such as demand forecasting and predictive maintenance of company equipment, as well as diagnostic analytics, such as business monitoring.

Natural language understanding (NLP)

Natural language processing (NLP) is the process by which computers comprehend spoken and written human language. It is accomplished through artificial intelligence, which reads texts, hears speech, interprets it, and measures sentiment.

Chatbots, hearing impairment, search engines, translation, and text-to-voice conversion are all examples of current NLP applications. Continue reading to learn whether AI is the future of business and how it is currently being used in various industries.

Sales and marketing using artificial intelligence

Marketing is critical to the success of the sales team. The marketing team generates interest in your company's products or services. While doing so, AI can be useful, particularly in marketing campaigns.

HighLevel is an alternative to ActiveCampaign that provides a customizable all-in-one solution for business agencies. AI in marketing is used in data collection, data analysis, audience analysis, and economic trend analysis.

Marketing teams can use this data to create real-time personalization of buyer personas. They can then tailor a marketing asset, such as a website, social media post, or email, to the customized buyer persona. This could be to encourage them to click on a link, sign up, or simply buy a product.

Another area where AI can help is with media buying. It forecasts the most effective ad and media placement for reaching their target audience and increasing their marketing ROI. The marketing team does not have to be concerned about marketing funds being misappropriated.

AI can help boost digital marketing efforts by making content creation easier. AI content writing tools can generate both long and short-form content, such as emails, web copy, blogs, video captions, and more. Natural Language Processing (NLP) on the other hand, can be used for customer service bots.

Moving forward, intelligent AI algorithms will assist marketing teams in automating their activities and speeding up the sales process.

Accounting artificial intelligence

AI can automate nearly all accounting tasks. This includes payroll, taxes, audits, banking, and everything else. While increasing productivity, it also improves financial transparency, audibility, and the use of data in forecasting financial statements.

Accounting applications of AI include:

Payables/Receivables Processing: One of the most time-consuming and labour-intensive tasks in accounting is invoice processing.

AI invoice management automates this process, eliminates processing errors, and strengthens business relationships with vendors.

Supplier Onboarding: Using AI to perform due diligence before onboarding suppliers allows you to easily detect discrepancies in vendors, protects you from partnering with fraudulent suppliers, and reduces your onboarding time from days to minutes.

Procurement Methodologies: The sourcing and procurement departments are constantly under pressure to deliver value. The purchasing and procurement process, on the other hand, is riddled with paperwork and bureaucracy. Using AI workflows speeds up the process while reducing compliance risks. ProcureDesk is a better choice than Procurify for procurement software because it allows for easier tracking and real-time data when approving and submitting expense reports to accounting.

Auditing is the process of reviewing a company's financial statements to ensure they are accurate and reflect the true financial state of the company. It is typically a time-consuming and manual process. AI is being used in some auditing tasks, such as running fraud algorithms on financial records.

Expense Management: Expense management is complex paperwork that is vulnerable to fraud and/or data breaches when done manually. AI expense management automation eliminates nearly all errors and alerts the accounting team in the event of a breach.

Sales using artificial intelligence

Sales is a labour-intensive and time-consuming business activity. AI is already gaining traction and achieving success in sales automation. According to a Harvard Business Review study, businesses that use AI in sales have seen their operations costs reduced by 40-60%, call times reduced by 60-70%, and lead generation increased by more than 50%.

Businesses can increase the productivity and efficiency of their sales teams by implementing AI. First, by reducing the administrative burden on the sales representative and lowering revenue operations through the automation of sales activities such as (meetings, emails, texts, and emails).

Second, the sales team can use AI to track and analyze contact relationships, conduct sentiment analysis, and provide virtual sales coaching to team members. AI simplifies the analysis of sales data and the identification of patterns in sales activities that lead to closed deals. It also assists you in identifying repeat sales to the same buyers by sales reps rather than targeting higher-level accounts.

If you've struggled to trace your sales pipeline succinctly, AI will assist you. As it continuously updates data in real time, it will also improve your sales forecasting and self-heal your CRM (no outdated or incorrect data).

Businesses that implement artificial intelligence for their sales team will see exponential sales results because they will have real-time access to sales intelligence. Salesforce, Drift, Conversica, exceed, and Crayon are some examples of AI software for sales currently available on the market.

Human resource artificial intelligence

Findings from The Human Resources Future State Report 2021:

According to the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Talent Processes, 82% of HR teams will use AI tools in human resource management over the next five years, and more than 50% of companies are already using AI to change their hiring and employee management processes.

Such statistics indicate that the use of AI in human resources will continue to grow, and businesses that have not yet embraced the trend should do so in order to remain competitive. Among the current applications of AI in human resources are:

Recruiting: Even if the resumes are digital, going through hundreds, if not thousands, of them manually is difficult and time-consuming. You can use AI software to enter parameters such as education and experience of what you're looking for. Resumes that do not meet your criteria are disqualified, and only candidates whose resumes meet your criteria are interviewed. This process also aids in unbiased candidate screening, and businesses are more likely to have a diverse workforce as a result.

Onboarding: Once the right candidate has been identified, HR can use AI to assist with onboarding, particularly for remote hires. It does not restrict onboarding to a specific time, date, or location, and HR chatbots can help with the process.

In customer service, artificial intelligence is used.

Customer retention, lifetime value, and business reputation are all affected by your ability to resolve customer queries quickly and satisfactorily. However, as your company grows, it becomes more difficult to provide adequate customer service. AI is one tool that is assisting in this resolution.

Among these options are:

Customer service via chatbot

Every day, customer service representatives must handle a large number of calls. As a result, they must resolve each customer's issue in a timely manner. They are prone to fatigue and burnout, as well as making mistakes.

Chatbots are being used to relieve some of the burden on customer support agents by acting as the first point of contact with customers. They are accustomed to answering the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) and queuing a human customer service agent if the questions do not fall within the scope of the FAQs.

Because chatbots are automated, they respond quickly, and customers do not have to wait in line to speak with a customer support agent to resolve a minor issue. Chatbots can also answer many customer questions with high accuracy and are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Voice Assistants

Voice bots are AI bots that can listen to, interpret, and analyze speech and respond in natural language. They program the voice bot, like the chatbot, to answer the most frequently asked questions in speech form.

When customers call your customer service line, voice bots answer the phone, listen, and respond appropriately. Voice bots can improve call categorization and route customer calls to the department best suited to handle their problem.

The data generated by these AI customer support tools can be used to understand customer pain points as well as customer behaviors and patterns.

To summarize

The way businesses operate will continue to change as we progress in this digital age. Artificial intelligence (AI) will become commonplace and integrated into the day-to-day operations of businesses. Ignoring AI right now would be a huge disservice to your company. Use AI to automate monotonous and repetitive tasks in your business, ultimately improving your bottom line.