Artificial intelligence (AI) has been around for a while, but it’s only recently that it’s started to become more widely used in the business world. AI can apply to all areas of business, from sales to finance to human resources and others.
Artificial intelligence allows companies large and small to get more done with less manpower. With AI at their disposal, businesses can automate tasks that previously required someone’s full attention—like processing customer data or managing inventory levels—which lets employees focus more on value-added tasks like sales and customer service.
In this article, let’s discuss the advantages of artificial intelligence to businesses and how your company can take advantage of it to operate more effectively and efficiently.
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
Artificial intelligence is a computer system that can be trained to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. It’s a type of software capable of learning and problem-solving with the help of algorithms that mimic human brain functions. Artificial intelligence has applications in many fields, including medicine, law, business, and academia.
How Does AI Work: a General Overview
AI systems rely on machine learning, i.e., computers analyze large amounts of data and learn patterns to make predictions about future events. They can do this with incredible accuracy.
Take Google Translate as an example—it can instantly translate text between any pair of languages without human intervention. That’s because Google Translate can analyze millions upon millions of documents written in multiple languages and learn which combinations of words tend to appear together in different contexts.
There are two typical types of AI, each with specific applications and uses. The first is known as “weak AI,” which refers to a system that can perform only one task at a time. Weak AI also has no knowledge base and can’t generalize based on past experiences.
Another type of AI is “strong AI,” which indicates a system that can perform multiple tasks simultaneously. It can also build upon previous experiences to learn more about its environment and surroundings.
Advantages of Artificial Intelligence
According to BCG, “modest investments in specific AI use cases can generate up to 6% more revenue, and with rising investments, the revenue impact from AI triples to 20% or more.” Forrester’s researchers even emphasize that “AI has fundamentally changed our ability to understand and empower our bespoke audiences, whether customer or employee.”
Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of using artificial intelligence in businesses:
1. AI Helps Improve Customer Service
AI will be able to interact with customers in real-time and respond to their questions or concerns in a way that feels more natural than any human could ever manage. This will strengthen the customer experience, which will keep people coming back to your brand repeatedly.
2. AI Helps Make Decisions Faster
Artificial intelligence can help businesses make decisions that are more accurate and consistent.
For example, your company can use an AI-powered platform that uses data from previous sales to predict how many people will buy your product. Or you can use it to determine which products should be promoted at certain times. This allows you to make strategic decisions about what products should go into production – no more guesswork.
3. AI Helps Save Operational Costs
When you use AI to automate processes, you can reduce the need for human employees to do repetitive tasks. This will allow your business to focus on other areas of growth, like innovation and development.
Some AI systems are even trained to write content by analyzing the data from thousands of articles written by human authors. This means you might not need to hire writers or editors anymore, which helps you save money on employee salaries and training and management costs.
4. AI Helps Understand Customers Better
As said above, artificial intelligence can analyze large amounts of data and identify patterns and trends in seconds. It can help you figure out what your customers need and what they want to get from your company. You can use an AI system to collect customer insights and then use those insights to provide your audiences with personalized recommendations.
Think about showing relevant content to what a customer read or the products that can be paired with the item they’ve just added to their cart. This will help improve the shopping experience, drive purchases, and build trustworthy relationships with the customer.
5. AI Helps Forecast Revenue and Sales
Forecasting revenue and sales is a complex task that requires many different inputs from customers, suppliers, and employees. But that can be easy with the help of an AI-powered tool.
Your AI system will learn from past data and predict what will happen in the future based on your company’s history. It also takes into account any changes that have occurred recently or that might happen in the future (such as new products or price changes).
Hence, your AI can identify patterns in your historical data and predict how much money will be made from each product line over time. This allows you to make informed decisions about inventory levels and other aspects of your business operation.
Latest AI Technologies
1. AI Technologies in Sales
Many companies currently use AI-powered lead scoring software to evaluate lead quality. Basically, lead scoring is the process of assigning a numerical value to every single lead that comes into a CRM (customer relationship management) system and then evaluating those leads based on their importance and potential.
Lead scoring is important because it helps salespeople understand who they’re working with and how to structure their campaigns around specific customers’ needs. It also helps them increase efficiency by ensuring they’re not wasting time contacting clients who aren’t a good fit for their product or service.
2. AI Technologies in Customer Service
Customer service is one of the most important aspects of any business. It’s one of the first things companies look at when considering new technologies.
There are several ways that AI can be used in customer service, including chatbots. For example, a chatbot can be programmed to handle basic questions, such as opening an account or verifying identity. It can also be designed to deal with complex inquiries like providing information about a product or solving a technical issue. The best part is chatbots are easy to use and can offer the same level of service as humans.
3. AI Technologies in Finance
AI is revolutionizing the financial industry. According to Insider Intelligence, AI can help financial institutions (FIs) provide customers with 24/7 access to their accounts and personalized financial services. AI applications also allow FIs to prevent fraud and cyberattacks by monitoring all transactions and analyzing them for suspicious activities.
Another innovative use case of AI in finance is algorithm trading—a technology that uses computer algorithms to trade securities. Algorithmic trading can be used to automate the process of buying and selling securities, allowing a trader to focus on higher-level strategies like research and analysis.
AI In Business: Case Studies
Now that you’ve understood artificial intelligence can become a game changer for your business. In case you aren’t convinced yet, we have three real-life case studies of organizations that have been using Revenue Grid, an AI-powered revenue intelligence platform, to make their business more efficient, save money, and increase revenue.
1. VDA – Transporation Consulting Services
Challenge: VDA is a leading provider of elevator and escalator consulting solutions. Previously the company struggled with auto-capturing customer data and building customer engagement. They also wanted to streamline operations to improve employee productivity.
Solution: VDA has used Revenue Grid’s tools to address their customer engagement challenges and move sales and customer communication online in COVID period. For example, they used Calendar Sync to sync data between Salesforce and Outlook. They also used Sales Sequence to automatically send customers highly personalized emails that include merged fields with Salesforce data.
Results: Since using Revenue Grid, VDA has synced 340,000 activities between Salesforce and Outlook. They also improved customer inquiry processing and reply time by 20%.
Read the full case study of VDA here.
2. Insurance Brokerage Company
Challenge: The insurance company decided to expand their business with new investment and retirement planning units, but the new structure severely complicated their workflows. They had insurance, investment and retirement units. The great challenge came from the synchronization of customer data between the units, duplicated data and inaccurate reporting
Solution: Revenue Grid’s integration of Salesforce with emails and calendars integration solved the problem of multiple “Related To” relationships in Salesforce, ensuring accurate reporting and data hygiene
Results: After the first year of using Revenue Grid, the number of new contracts in each business unit grew by 30% on average, with at least a 50% increase in the number of new meetings per employee
Read the full case study of insurance company here.
3. Slalom Consulting
Challenge: Slalom identified the potential sources of revenue leaks within their pipeline. The company met with the following challenges: unsaved contacts in Salesforce, not enough sales meetings, sales playbooks were not followed.
Solution: Revenue Grid helped Slalom to digitalize its sales coaching with Revenue Signals, streamline the scheduling process with Book Me and Time Slots features and automated the outreach to sales contacts.
Results: Despite the negative effect of the economic downturn, Slalom experienced 2,5X increase in the number of contacts served, 80% decrease in the time scheduling meetings and 3X increase in the number of the autocreated contacts.
Read the full case study of Slalom Consulting here
In conclusion, the advantages of AI in business are significant and can help you stay ahead of the competition. Revenue Grid is a revenue intelligence solution that brings the power of AI to your business. It can help you find and fix revenue leaks, streamline sales processes, and bring your revenue to the new level even in crisis times. Don’t miss out on the advantages of AI in business; use Revenue Grid today and start realizing the benefits for your organization.
