Practical Uses for AI in Businesses of Any Size

Technology is getting smarter, from the consumer level on up. As such, artificial intelligence is appearing in more and more applications that all businesses can embrace. Let’s take a few minutes and go over the various ways that artificial intelligence can be used to support your business’ operations.

Defining Artificial Intelligence

While the term sounds super advanced—and a little intimidating, if we’re being honest—all artificial intelligence really describes is a computing system that has been taught to perform or automate tasks. There are two varieties of AI, usually classified between:

• Narrow AI, or AI that is limited to performing or learning specific tasks. This variety includes the virtual assistants that are appearing in smart devices, the technology that powers self-driving cars, and other such applications.
• General AI, or AI that can adapt and learn how to perform a variety of different tasks, much like the human brain can. This is the variety that we commonly see in popular culture and science fiction.

Today, businesses can implement AI to accomplish a variety of goals and tasks.

How Businesses Use AI Today

Overall, businesses today use AI functionality to accomplish any of three objectives: business process automation, data analytics, and engagement with customers and employees alike. Let’s go into how these objectives are benefitted by AI.

Process Automation

This variety of automation primarily focuses on a business’ behind-the-scenes activities, like keeping records updated and otherwise saving a human being’s time. As the least expensive to implement and quickest to deliver a return on investment to the business that adopts it, business process automation has helped many industries complete their rote processes.

Data Analytics

This form of automation is tasked with processing the massive amounts of data that today’s businesses possess, identifying patterns that would otherwise be far too time-consuming to track. From predicting consumer activity to auditing business exchanges, this form of automation gives many businesses capabilities that simply couldn’t be attained with human insights alone.

Engagement

Finally, automation has also proven handy as a means of communicating with clients, customers, and employees alike. Whether you’re referring to the customer service tools that appear on many modern websites that help walk someone through their issue or the treatment recommendation systems that some medical providers use to customize an individual’s healthcare strategy, these systems effectively provide a smarter way to get information to the person who \\wants and needs to see it.

While all this sounds intensely complicated and difficult to implement, it doesn’t have to be. The team at SCW can assist you with these kinds of improvements as well as a litany of other IT needs. To find out what we can do for you specifically, give us a call at (509) 534-1530 today.